Strategic Path Change Maneuvers for Weather Obstacle Avoidance in Aviation

Weather avoidance algorithms play a crucial role in significantly enhancing aircraft safety during flight operations, particularly in the presence of severe weather conditions. This paper presents a novel obstacle avoidance strategy based on the use of alternative paths to circumvent obstacles during the cruise phase. The objective of this study is to assess the benefits of using strategic information to address tactical avoidance issues. Firstly, the new strategy is simulated in a dynamic space populated with weather obstacles. Subsequently, the proposed strategy is compared to a classical avoidance maneuver in several dynamic simulations, varying the size of the obstacles. The results show that including strategic information on dynamic rerouting can be of significant benefit to both the pilot and air traffic controller, providing a supportive decision-making tool for bad weather avoidance.