Airspace Design Proposal for Efficient Flight Operations in North Pacific Oceanic Airspace

Flights across the North Pacific remain in oceanic airspace for 7 hours or more, so increasing the efficiency of flights through this airspace may contribute significantly to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. One cause of loss of efficiency is flights being unable to operate at their requested cruise level due to conflicts with other traffic. Through fast time simulation of traffic between Japan and North America, this paper clarifies that the potential for conflicts increases in the vicinity of the oceanic gateway fixes in Fukuoka FIR, which are spaced approximately 60NM apart. We propose using advances in CNS/ATM performance to reduce the gateway interval to 30NM and create additional gateways between the existing ones, to disperse traffic and reduce conflicts. Simulation results show that the proposed gateway design concentrates westbound traffic at one or two gateways that coincide with the wind-optimal routes on each day, while eastbound traffic flows are dispersed.