Regular graph-based free route flight planning approach

What is it about?

Free route airspace (FRA) concept assumes that “users can freely plan a route between a defined entry point and a defined exit point, with the possibility of routing via intermediate (published or unpublished) waypoints, without reference to the air traffic services route network”. This new concept implies a need of an airspace mathematical model enabling effective flight planning. The airspace model should include legacy data, such as restrictions and restricted areas, to preserve the main airspace features. Simultaneously, it may consist of currently available data sets such as winds, storm predictions, route charges, as well as airspace capacity to support the flight planning process extensively. This work introduces a new graph theory-based airspace model dedicated to an automatic free route flight plan preparation. The crucial scope of work concentrates on effective incorporation all available datasets describing the airspace and weather state into a new coherent model. The model enables standard shortest paths finding algorithms application for the flight plans approximation. To prove the concept a new software toolset for free route flight planning was developed and assessed.

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