It proposes the definition of a business object that realises extended flight plan functionality/information. This business object would allow for more precise prediction of aircraft trajectories and thus for optimised use of the already overcrowded airspace in Europe. A flight plan represents the basic contract between a pilot and air traffic control. However, the current format for filed flight plans contains only limited information with equally limited precision about flights, while the airlines have access to significantly more detailed data. This extended flight plan functionality makes use of information about aircraft already available to airline pilots but not communicated to air traffic control.The thesis aims to demonstrate that an enhanced set of flight plan information would assist air traffic control in their tactical decisions and that different analyses of radar data and flight plans might give researchers a better understanding of the causes of discrepancies between predicted and realised trajectories.
SOFT - Study of Operational Flight Plans and Trajectories
This diploma thesis was written in the of a collaboration agreement between the EUROCONTROL Experimental Centre (EEC) in Brétigny-sur-Orge and the research group Computergestatzte Informationssysteme (CIS) of Technische Universitat Berlin.