The Length of Flight Plan Calculation

Airspace users give special requirements to selection of efficient airplane trajectories during the pre-flight planning stage. A set of waypoints could be chosen based on criteria of lowes fees, required fuel, smallest flight time, and shortest length with taking into account requirements of insuring required level of flight safety. Separation minimums in horizontal and vertical planes provide a safety buffer between airspace users. In the paper, we consider different algorithms of length of flight route calculation and analyze their application for parameters of flight plan estimation. We compare direct distance calculation in Euclidean space, the lenth of a great circle line, the length of rhumb (loxodrome) line, and arch length formed by isobaric surface which is used for airplane flight leveling. We consider an actual weather action on Estimated Time Enroute between waypoints and Time of Arrival at each waypoint. A flight-planned route from Los Angeles international airport to Chicago O’hare international airport is used as an example for parameters of flight plan calculation with different lengths.