Resumen de The future of free route in the european airspace: a study quantifying the cost-benefits and safety-cost of its implementation
Free-route airs pace perm its us ers to freely plan a route between defined entry and exit waypoints with the pos s ibility of routing 1.fa intermediate points. Flights flyíng in a free-route area remain subject to air traffic control (ATC) for separation provision.
This thesis evaluates the free-route aírspace implementation in terms ofthree different scenarios, one ofwhich represents an extreme future s cenario of free-ro u te im plem entatíon, cons idering the complete upper airs pace of the Euro pean Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC) area as a unique airspace block configured with free route.
This research centres on investigating !he benefits for airspace users and on the studyof possible increments in complexity for such configurations. In this research, fasttime simulations are conducted to determine how much flight time, fuel and distan ce aircraft can save with this free-route configuratlon.
Meanwhile, this thesis also explains the evolution of conflicts derived from potential separation los ses between aircraft in this new environment. Free-mute separation los ses can emerge atany point ofthe airspace and can require greatereffortto be s olved com pared to fixed ai rway configurations, where confl icts usually occur in well-known airway i nters ections.
The airspace configurations modelled in this study cons istofthe fixed airways structure, referred to as lnitial, and the future scenario, named Free Route, where new navigation points are added. This research explores the advantages and difficulties thata large-scale application ofthe free-mute concept can bring to European aírspace.
Deriving from this study's results, it could be concluded that airspace users experience great benefits from free-route implementation, including important distance savings that can reach 1,30% ofthe nominal route in a full European free route.
Regarding complexity, this thesis provides important results for free-route implementation, stating that horizontal com plexity and conflicts will be increased byFRA, as the airspace trajectories and flows become more random, increasing the crossing interactions. On the other hand. however, the vertical and speed interaclions notably decrease, producing a global reduction in complexity.
