The Boeing Company
Detecting violation of aircraft separation requirements

Abstract:

A computing system obtains flight information comprising a plurality of waypoints for each of a plurality of aircraft flight paths, and detects a violation of aircraft separation requirements at a given time instance. Each waypoint specifies an altitude, a longitudinal position, a latitudinal position, a velocity, and a time instance. Detecting the violation comprises selecting a set of time-correlated waypoints from the flight information, each time-correlated waypoint specifying the given time instance. The detecting further comprises selecting a set of altitude-correlated waypoints from the set of time-correlated waypoints, each of the altitude-correlated waypoints being vertically-separated from at least one other altitude-correlated waypoint by less than a threshold vertical separation. The detecting further comprises determining that first and second position-correlated waypoints from the set of altitude-correlated waypoints are vertically-separated from each other by less than the threshold vertical separation and horizontally-separated from each other by less than a threshold horizontal separation.