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Aircraft performance
Published in Paul Clark, Buying the Big Jets, 2017
Cruise altitudes are usually subject to ‘semi-circular’ rules that indicate the normal altitudes according to whether the aircraft is moving in a westerly or easterly direction. Vertical separation between flight levels had historically been 2,000 feet, but in an effort to improve airspace efficiency Reduced Vertical Separation Minima (RVSM) were progressively introduced which reduces the separation to 1,000 feet. RVSM is applicable between flight levels 290 and 410 (29,000 feet and 41,000 feet) and has now become applied extensively throughout the world. Thus, for track headings of 000 to 179° flight levels FL290, 310, 330 etc. are used, and for track headings of 180 to 359° flight levels FL300, 320, 340 etc. are used. Countries with predominantly north to south traffic, such as France, Portugal, Italy and New Zealand, have semi-circular rules defined in a north:south fashion as opposed to an east:west fashion. The benefits of RVSM are reduced fuel burn owing to opportunities to better optimise flight levels and also reduced delays as more levels are available to controllers. China, Russia and a number of CIS countries use metric flight levels requiring adjustments to be made to flight levels.
Aircraft navigation
Published in Mike Tooley, David Wyatt, Aircraft Communications and Navigation Systems, 2017
The majority of flights over the North Atlantic are by aircraft operating between flight levels FL290 – FL410 (29,000 – 41,000 feet). To ensure adequate airspace capacity and provide for safe vertical separations, reduced vertical separation minimums (RVSM) is applied throughout the region. RVSM allows aircraft to fly with a vertical separation of 1000 feet between FL290 and FL410 inclusive. Entry/exit and movement along these tracks is controlled by Oceanic Control Centres air traffic controllers to maintain aircraft separation.
Technological Constraints
Published in Steven D. Jaffe, Airspace Closure and Civil Aviation, 2016
The benefit of RVSM to airlines and ANSPs has been dramatic. According to a Eurocontrol report, domestic implementation of RVSM in the United States provided greater availability of flight routes and more efficient altitudes, resulting in an overall fuel reduction of about 2 percent. Annual fuel savings in 2005 were estimated at $359 million, and forecast to increase 2 percent every year through 2019. (Bouman 2003)
Emission-aware adjustable robust flight path planning with respect to fuel and contrail cost
Published in Transportmetrica B: Transport Dynamics, 2023
The kriging interpolation method is a well-known methodology for constructing an estimation of meteorological variables in a spatial map with respect to the empirical climate data from weather stations (Rostami et al. 2020; Sluiter 2012). Ordinary Kriging is a linear combination of the measured climate data as mentioned in Equation (1). Several studies focused on the comparison of kriging methods, including spherical, exponential, gaussian, cube, logarithmic kriging, and co-kriging (Rostami et al. 2020; Kyriakidis 2004; Nas and Berktay 2010; Amirfakhrian and Samavati 2021; Casellas et al. 2020). However, in this study, we are concerned with the cost impact of fuel consumption and contrail length corresponding to the flight path selection. The cost factors of flight path planning should correlate to the changes in interpolation methods. Therefore, we simply use the ordinary kriging method in the numerical study. The weather data for the Southeast Asia region was obtained from the Wyoming weather web, University of Wyoming, Laramie, USA.1 In our study, we are interested in the spatial meteorological estimations in China as we consider domestic flight path planning within the region. Four Hundred and thirty-three weather stations are recognised as Chinese centennial observing station according to the record from the world meteorological organisation,2 while around 75–77 weather reports can be retrieved from the Wyoming weather web every day. The number of weather report depends on the availability of weather stations and may not be available due to station maintenance reasons. The station information, station latitude, longitude, and the corresponding meteorological data, including a set of air pressure , a set of temperature , a set of relative humidity to water and their corresponding altitude, are provided in the weather report. We can then calibrate the spatial meteorological estimations of air pressure , temperature , and relative humidity to water at geographic coordinate for each flight level , where . Selected flight levels are valid for executing instrument flying rules (IFRs) with reduced vertical separation minima (RVSM) as defined in civil aviation terms.