A tool to design Functional Airspace Blocks

Abstract : This paper focuses on the selection of a technical tool for the establishment of functional airspace blocks in Europe. This paper shows that the creation of functional airspace blocks is a partitioning problem. Some state-of-the-art partitioning libraries and two metaheuristics are applied to this problem. Comparisons have been made between these libraries and metaheuristics. Results show that the Fusion Fission metaheuristic performs better. The purpose of this paper is not to give the best partition of Europe into functional airspace blocks. It only presents a study which compares and suggests different tools for the establishment of functional airspace blocks in Europe.