Optimal Aircraft Routing in General Wind Fields

An iterative method yielding an absolute minimum, requiring moderate computational effort and memory space because of importance of aircraft routing for economic and environmental reasons has been demonstrated. Aircraft navigation involves routing and guidance of airplanes as a part of flight planning and aircraft guidance refers to guiding the aircraft along the route. Inefficient routing may result in excess fuel burn and excess emissions and minimal flight problem is a simple example of the control problem of Bolza. The method appears to be very suitable in practical cases, because the preceding requirements can be satisfied. Iterative methods applied to the computation of minimal-flight paths on an operational basis are vulnerable, because apart from the fact that convergence problems might occur, the iteration process could converge to a relative minimum instead of converging to an absolute minimum, depending on the nominal solution.