Introducing Free Route Airspace to Northeast Asia/Pacific Region

Abstract

The Asia/Pacific region is recognized as an area of high air transportation growth, which will require increased air traffic management system efficiency. The Free Route Airspace (FRA) concept increases airspace user flexibility by allowing flight planning without reference to air traffic service routes. This enables more efficient flight plans and increases predictability by reducing the discrepancy between planned and flown trajectories. We propose introducing the FRA concept to the Incheon and Fukuoka Flight Information Regions, targeting a major international air traffic flow between Korea and North America. After analyzing the characteristics of the flow, we present the initial airspace design and concepts of operation. We estimate potential efficiency gains, and compare the air traffic complexity of the proposed FRA and the existing airspace. In addition to the EUROCONTROL complexity metric, a new complexity metric called “Hot Cell Ratio” is introduced to better represent complexity that arises from geographically dispersed traffic. The results show that there are potential flight plan distance reductions from FRA comparable to European targets, but the benefit is reduced by training and restricted-use airspaces. However, traffic complexity is not notably changed by FRA implementation.