Tradeoffs for routing flights in view of multiple weather hazards

Adverse weather impacts the safety and efficiency of aviation. Convective storms, turbulence, and icing are aviation weather hazards that can lead to unpleasant rides and, in the worst case scenario, pose safety risks. Commercial flight route planning tools are largely based on wind optimization, and the daily air traffic flow discussion is heavily focused on avoidance of deep convective storms. Other hazards such as icing (mostly an issue for general aviation) and turbulence have to be manually accounted for by a dispatcher. Routing solutions favoring avoidance of convective storms can result in undesired outcomes such as significant encounters or extended duration of turbulence. This study examines various flight routing approaches, taking into account multiple weather hazards for a range of decision time horizons. A range of time horizons (that is, look-ahead distances) is used to assess the potential benefits of using weather uplinks (for example, onto an electronic flight bag) as compared to the limited information available through the onboard radar. The paper provides a glance at how to improve trajectory-based operations for safe, efficient, and comfortable airborne travel in the future.