@inproceedings{BlancoBorndoerferMaristanydelasCasas, author = {Blanco, Marco and Bornd{\"o}rfer, Ralf and Maristany de las Casas, Pedro}, title = {An A* Algorithm for Flight Planning Based on Idealized Vertical Profiles}, series = {22nd Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2022)}, volume = {106}, booktitle = {22nd Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2022)}, doi = {10.4230/OASIcs.ATMOS.2022.1}, pages = {1:1 -- 1:15}, abstract = {The Flight Planning Problem is to find a minimum fuel trajectory between two airports in a 3D airway network under consideration of the wind. We show that this problem is NP-hard, even in its most basic version. We then present a novel A∗ heuristic, whose potential function is derived from an idealized vertical profile over the remaining flight distance. This potential is, under rather general assumptions, both admissible and consistent and it can be computed efficiently. The method outperforms the state-of-the-art heuristic on real-life instances.}, language = {en} }