A methodology for designing transition route network between en-route airspace and terminal areas

A methodology is presented, in this paper, to design the transition network around the terminal areas (TMAs). The methodology consists of two parts: the multi-objective model and the algorithm. Our model is based on the definition of the optimal transition network, which refers to a tradeoff among the economy, the safety and the structure simplicity of the network. The economy, namely the cost of the network is denoted by the mileage of all the aircraft, the safety is expressed by the attribute-the conflicts of the network, and the structure simplicity of the network is reflected by the balance of the aircraft flow entering / departing TMAs in each transition routes. Then an evolutionary optimization algorithm, non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm 2 (NSGA2), is applied to solve the model and provide the optimal transition network structure. The model is validated by the data from the transition network of Beijing TMA, which demonstrates the superiority of the methodology by the comparison of the transition network performance with the current one.