Redesign of the European route network for sector-less

Abstract

International audience; The increase in air traffic and the limited capacity of air traffic control services force us to think of a new way in which to control aircraft. An innovative ATM concept, called Sector-Less Air Traffic Management, has been defined by the Eurocontrol Experimental Centre. In this concept the role of the controller is radically different from the current one : instead of having controllers controlling a sector, controllers would be responsible for a certain number of aircraft from departure to arrival in terminal areas. The aim of this paper is to redesign the European en-route network in order to make this new way of controlling aircraft possible and to provide an aeroplane with the shortest route possible by providing a new route network. The approach proposed here is, starting from scratch, to provide a very simple route network and to improve it by using optimisation algorithm. A generated route network will be evaluated in terms of length of trajectories weighted by the amount of aeroplanes using them and then compare it with the direct route network and the current one. Using this tool and a fast time air traffic simulator, the Sector-Less concept will be able to be evaluated in terms of capacity and delay due to conflict. This also provides the route density of the network for this concept. The results of various simulations performed on the best route network generated so far will be presented.