Optimization-Based Design of Departure and Arrival Routes in Terminal Maneuvering Area

Abstract

International audienceThe efficient design of departure and arrival routes in the airspace surrounding airports, called the Terminal Maneuvering Area (TMA), is crucial for increasing the capacity of such areas, and thus alleviating congestion around airports caused by worldwide air traffic growth. In this paper, an efficient method of designing departure and arrival routes in TMA is proposed, taking into account the configuration of the airport and nearby environment, as well as related operational constraints, such as obstacle avoidance and route separation. Each route is modeled in three dimensions (3D), and consists of two components: a curve in the horizontal plane and a cone in the vertical plane. A Branch and Bound (B&B)-based approach is developed, whose branching strategies are tailored to how the obstacles are avoided. Routes are generated sequentially, and each route is initially built in isolation. If the route is found to be in conflict with previously generated routes, it is perturbed locally around the conflict zones. Numerical tests, performed on artificially generated problems and the TMA of Paris Charles-de-Gaulle (CDG) airport, demonstrate that the proposed method is efficient and could be embedded in a decision-aid tool for procedure design