Abstract

Today’s flight planning aims for safety and efficiency based on the airspace structure, available air routes, and weather. For long-distance flights, wind is of primary interest (e.g., riding a tailwind versus avoiding headwinds) and large-scale convective weather systems (e.g., hurricanes) will ... Show moreToday’s flight planning aims for safety and efficiency based on the airspace structure, available air routes, and weather. For long-distance flights, wind is of primary interest (e.g., riding a tailwind versus avoiding headwinds) and large-scale convective weather systems (e.g., hurricanes) will be avoided. Daily flight planning in the United States considers strategically routing aircraft around areas that are or expected to be convectively active, but other weather hazards, like turbulence and inflight icing, are mostly dealt with tactically. We explore the potential benefits of considering multiple weather hazards for optimizing routes. We examine tradeoffs for various scenarios of making a route decision before takeoff versus nudging a flight en route as weather hazards present themselves. Results are shown for a combination of multiple city pairs (Figure 1) on a typical early winter day with a large-scale frontal system (Figure 2) affecting the United States airspace. This significant weather system included deep convective storms and notable areas of turbulence and icing hazards. The results are expressed in terms of distance flown and time exposed to weather hazards that have not been considered in the flight planning or execution. Show less