Automatic Design of Aircraft Arrival Routes with Limited Turning Angle

We present an application of Integer Programming to the design of arrival routes for aircraft in a Terminal Maneuvering Area (TMA). We generate operationally feasible merge trees of curvature-constrained routes, using two optimization criteria: (1) total length of the tree, and (2) distance flown along the tree paths. The output routes guarantee that the overall traffic pattern in the TMA can be monitored by air traffic controllers; in particular, we keep merge points for arriving aircraft well separated, and we exclude conflicts between arriving and departing aircraft. We demonstrate the feasibility of our method by experimenting with arrival routes for a runway at Arlanda airport in the Stockholm TMA. Our approach can easily be extended in several ways, e.g., to ensure that the routes avoid no-fly zones

Automation for separation with CDOs: dynamic aircraft arrival routes

Best paper award in Separation track, 2019 USA/Europe ATM R&D SeminarWe present a mixed-integer programming (MIP) approach to compute aircraft arrival routes in a terminal maneuvering area (TMA) that guarantee temporal separation of all aircraft arriving within a given time period, where the aircraft are flying according to the optimal continuous descent operation (CDO) speed profile with idle thrust. The arrival routes form a merge tree that satisfies several operational constraints, e.g., all merge points are spatially separated. We detail how the CDO speed profiles for different route lengths are computed. Experimental results are presented for calculation of fully automated CDO-enabled arrival routes during one hour of operation on a busy day at Stockholm TMA.Peer ReviewedAward-winningPostprint (author's final draft

Automation for separation with continuous descent operations: dynamic aircraft arrival routes

This paper presents a mixed-integer programming approach to compute aircraft arrival routes in a terminal maneuvering area (TMA) with guaranteed temporal separation of all aircraft arriving within a given time period. Furthermore, the aircraft are assumed to be flying according to their optimal continous descent operation speed profile with idle thrust and no speed brakes usage. The arrival routes form a merge tree that satisfies several operational constraints; for example, all merge points are spatially separated. How the continuous descent operation speed profiles for different route lengths are computed is detailed. Experimental results are presented for calculation of fully automated continuous descent operation-enabled arrival routes during 1 h of operation on a busy day at a Stockholm terminal maneuvering area. The current framework successfully generates an arrival tree, merging the traffic from all TMA entry points to the runway for 30 min intervals. For a complete 1 h period, two trees (per 30 min) are computed that differ as little as possible.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft