Data-Driven Approach Using Machine Learning for Real-Time Flight Path Optimization
- 1 January 2022
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) in Journal of Aerospace Information Systems
- Vol. 19 (1), 3-21
- https://doi.org/10.2514/1.i010940
Abstract
Airlines traditionally gather weather information before departure to generate flight routes that avoid hazardous weather while minimizing flight time. However, flight crews may have to perform in-flight replanning as weather information can significantly change after departure. This in-flight replanning activity is currently not fully automated, which has the potential to increase crew workload and adversely impact flight safety. The objective of this research is to mitigate some of these issues by developing an automated framework to perform continuous in-flight replanning. The proposed framework relies on three pillars and leverages: supervised machine learning technique to augment existing wind forecasts by providing a higher spatial and temporal granularity, unsupervised machine learning technique to perform short-term predictions of areas with significant convective activity, and graph-based pathfinding algorithm to generate optimized trajectories. The main contribution of this research is to combine these techniques to autonomously and continuously generate trajectories that minimize operating expenditures for airlines. Statistical analyses are performed to demonstrate the applicability and benefits of the proposed framework. Results indicate that optimized trajectories are 2% shorter than actual flight routes in most cases.Keywords
This publication has 18 references indexed in Scilit:
- A Method for Wind Speed Forecasting in Airports Based on Nonparametric RegressionWeather and Forecasting, 2014
- A particle swarm approach for flight path optimization in a constrained environmentAerospace Science and Technology, 2013
- Dynamically Generating Operationally Acceptable Route Alternatives Using Simulated AnnealingAir Traffic Control Quarterly, 2012
- Ensemble Data Assimilation with the NCEP Global Forecast SystemMonthly Weather Review, 2008
- Severe weather avoidance using informed heuristic searchPublished by American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) ,2001
- Robust algorithm for real-time route planningIEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, 2000
- Comparing images using the Hausdorff distanceIEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 1993
- A Formal Basis for the Heuristic Determination of Minimum Cost PathsIEEE Transactions on Systems Science and Cybernetics, 1968
- Computer flight planning in the north atlanticJournal of Aircraft, 1965
- A note on two problems in connexion with graphsNumerische Mathematik, 1959