Single cross-border free route airspace concept in the ASEAN region

• Main Authors: Srinivas, Athota, Koji, Tominaga, Zeng, Yixi, Duong, Vu N.
• Other Authors: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Engineering::Aeronautical engineering::Aviation; Free Route Airspace; Single Cross-Border Free Route Airspace; Fast-Time Simulation
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/171759
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Single Cross-Border Free Route Airspace (FRA) represents the ultimate long-term idealistic routing rules allowing airspace users freely plan a route in en-route airspace, which is not immediately possible from the administrative and technological point of view. In Single Cross-Border FRA, the whole ASEAN airspace is treated as a single-large FRA where all 12 Flight Information Regions (FIRs) implement FRA, with direct routing between the entry (horizontal entry into FIR or end of Standard Instrument Departure Route, SID) and the exit (horizontal exit from FIR or beginning of Standard Arrival Route, STAR). Single Cross-Border FRA is the most fuel-efficient reference that we could ever reach in the future. All other hypothetical routing rules fall between the Single Cross-Border FRA and those hypo-thetical routing rules in terms of fuel efficiency. In this paper, we described the potential in fuel efficiency (or 'benefit achievement scaling') with refer-ence to this ultimate basic fuel requirement and scaled the excess fuel with different routings. We evaluated the fuel burn with a fast-time simulation (FTS) in 12 different scenarios (3 traffic volume levels × 4 routing scenarios). As for the traffic volume scenarios, we simulated 1-day of commercial ASEAN flight schedule data of 3 traffic volume levels (100%, 150%, and 200% of pre-COVID19 traffic volume). As for four routing scenarios with increasing levels of directness: conventional Air Traffic Service route network (ATS) (R1), hypothetical Several-Small FRA route network (R2), Single Cross-Border FRA route network with Danger Areas (R3) and Single Cross-Border FRA network without Danger Areas (R4). Results showed that flight time, fuel burn, and distance travelled were less in R2, R3, and R4 than in R1. There was an average difference of 2.2% in flight time, 1.9% in fuel burn, and 2.2% in distance travelled from R1 to R4.