On the Impact of Charging Zones in the European Airspace on Routing

Abstract

Commercial airlines pay navigation charges for each flight in the European airspace. These charges differ between countries. Thus, flying detours may lead to reduced costs if the longer route uses the airspace of countries with cheaper charges. In this paper, we analyze this incentive for flying routes longer than the shortest ones. While previous research discussed examples, we implemented a route planner which is capable of computing costoptimal routes with respect to both fuel costs and navigation charges. This approach enables us to reveal unintended incentives for detours. Furthermore, we can analyze the impact of the distribution of areas with high and low charges, and quantify the overall impact of this phenomenon in terms of extra miles flown, and additional CO2 emitted.