Time-Fuel-Optimal Navigation of a Commercial Aircraft in Cruise with Heading and Throttle Controls using Pontryagin's Maximum Principle

Abstract: In this research, we consider the commercial aircraft trajectory optimization problem for a general cruise model with arbitrary spatial wind fields to be solved using the Pontryagin maximum principle. The model features two fundamental controls, namely, throttle setting (which appears as a singular control) and heading angle (appearing as a regular control). For a constrained problem with minimum time-fuel objective, we show that the optimal heading angle is fully defined through the classic Zermelo navigation identity. We also show that the optimal throttle setting can be characterized through a complete feedback function. The switching-point algorithm is employed to solve a case study where we inspect the optimality conditions and graph the optimal controls together with the optimal state and co-state variables.