Fuel Optimal Aircraft Conflict Resolution Under Various Wind Characteristics

One of the main weather components that must be considered in aircraft conflict resolution is the wind. Wind includes two essential elements that affect the individual routes of flights: speed and direction. Studies show that stochastic programming approaches considering both wind speed and direction uncertainties have advantages in terms of efficient air traffic management compared to the deterministic approaches. However, the savings of the stochastic approaches may change regarding the wind uncertainty parameters considered. Prevailing wind directions, average wind speeds, and wind speed variation between levels may vary regionally. The study aims to evaluate the performance of the stochastic approach in terms of fuel savings under various wind characteristics. Wind data are obtained from three different wind stations provided by the weather sound database. A stochastic conflict resolution model is developed, and flight level change strategy is used for conflict resolution. The objective function is determined as the minimization of total fuel consumption. As a result, it is revealed how the savings of the stochastic model vary according to different wind characteristics.