Methods for continental fuel optimized interaction of user preferred trajectories

The reduction of fuel usage in the commercial air travel industry is a well known desirable. Airlines and pilots can define fuel efficient trajectories themselves however these can and usually do conflict with the responsibilities of those who govern air traffic to ensure safety therein. Even if the ability to define fuel efficient trajectories for particular aircraft were given to a sole entity, the methods the entity would use to determine appropriate interaction given that information has not been fully developed and questions remain on its feasibility. This paper presents an initial method for providing this function; its development can be seen as the integration of a novel means of storing navigation data with an optimization method that can provide fuel optimized decision making capability. As a result this combination allowed the understanding and optimization of mundane, extreme, transitory, and critical scenarios, creating concerted trajectories that minimize the effect of separation and forced arrival times on fuel usage. It has done this in light of known air traffic issues, developing component functions where necessary that are compatible with standards used in those issues, and, with no reliance on integer based optimizer methods and the potential inaccuracy such implies. In itself, the optimizer method showed promise in providing future guidance in terms of fuel optimized interaction of UPT and, with further development, could do so at a continental level. However, lessons learned during its development also provided insight into significant strategies that could be used in future versions