The Boeing Company

Matthew Elden Berge

Laura Sumi Kang

Darryn Frafford

Sharon Kay Filipowski

Esmond Ernest DeVun, Jr

Michael L Carter

Subhankar Banerjee

A method of air traffic planning includes defining an arrival network of nodes and legs. Each leg represents a segment traversed by an aircraft from an upstream one of the nodes to a downstream one of the nodes, with a plurality of the nodes being designated as scheduling points where one or more constraints are enforceable. The method includes defining for each of a plurality of aircraft, a route set including a plurality of allowed routes each of which includes legs between an arbitrary N scheduling points. And the method includes determining a plan including at least a sequence of the plurality of aircraft and an assigned route for each aircraft, with the assigned route of each aircraft may be one of the allowed routes in the route set of the respective aircraft, with the plan being determined in accordance with the arrival network, and the scheduling points and constraints.

Generalized arrival planning

A flight routing system for determining an alternative route for an aircraft based on an airspace partitioned into a plurality of sectors, and an original flight route having an initial point of takeoff and a destination point is disclosed. The flight routing system includes a processor and a memory storing instructions executable by the processor to perform operations including determining a plurality of points within each of the plurality of sectors. The plurality of points are each located along an edge of one of the plurality of sectors. The processor also performs operations including determining at least one connecting arc for each sector, where the connecting arc connects a first point with another point within each sector. The processor further performs operations for determining a complete time-based airspace network based on at least a forecast capacity.

System and method for determining an alternative flight route based on sector geometry

An improved method and system for solving a combinatorial optimization problem, such as a tracking problem, to define a plurality of associations of measurements taken of a plurality of objects is provided. In one aspect, a method, a system and a computer program product are provided for constructing a plurality of updated tracks by solving a Lagrangian dual in which each of the measurement constraints has been relaxed. In another aspect, a hybrid branch and bound and LR technique is provided to select a plurality of updated tracks from among a plurality of candidate tracks having respective initial costs. In this regard, a search tree of the candidate tracks is ordered based upon the initial costs of the candidate tracks as adjusted by the dual variables that have been defined as a result of solving a Lagrangian dual. In order to attempt to increase the efficiency with which a Lagrangian dual is solved by nonsmooth optimization techniques, initial values for the dual variables and some of the subgradients are judiciously selected. The dual variables are initialized and some subgradients are provided based upon values of corresponding dual variables and some of the subgradients, respectively, that were determined during the solution of the prior problem. The method and system can be implemented in a parallel processing architecture that utilizes both coarse grain and fine grain techniques to evenly schedule a number of subproblems amongst a plurality of processors in order to obtain a solution in an efficient manner.

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Woodinville, WA, United States of America

Matthew Elden Berge