Designated Points-based Free-Flight Approach to Enable Real-Time Flight Path Planning

Airlines typically gather all available weather information before departure to generate flight routes that avoid hazardous weather while minimizing operating expenditures. However, pilots potentially have to perform in-flight re-planning as weather information can significantly change after original flight plans are created. While pilots are generally asked to follow established waypoint-to-waypoint flight routes, the pilots sometimes do not follow the established flight routes but rather choose other flight route options (e.g., making a certain lateral deviation) especially when they encounter hazardous weather conditions. This research proposes a designated points-based flight path optimization model that combines the A* search algorithm with a free-flight approach to provide flight route selections that are not necessarily constrained to established waypoint-to-waypoint flight routes but provide acceptable free-flight route options. The proposed methodology is validated using the previous Delta Airlines Flight 971 delayed by hurricane Laura on August 27(th), 2020. The results show that 1) the proposed methodology yields the simulated trajectory similar to the actual flight trajectory (i.e., low Hausdorff distance), indicating that the proposed methodology accurately simulates the behavior of the actual flight under severe weather conditions and 2) the proposed methodology even slightly reduces by approximately 35 seconds the duration of the en-route segment of the actual flight.