Impact of Higher Airspace Operations on Air Traffic in Europe

Historically, higher airspace has been used for military exercises and as transit for space vehicles. Riding on commercial space operations’ coattails, more and more vehicles are under development that will make use of higher airspace resources. This will lead to increasing interactions with conventional air traffic since these new vehicles will have to transit through lower airspaces. The management of these operations is necessary to ensure the safe and practicable shared usage of these airspaces. This paper outlines an assessment of the impact of higher airspace operations on conventional air traffic in Europe. Initially, a synthesis of possible use cases was performed, and demand scenarios were developed that served as input to a fast-time simulation. The impact on air traffic was measured by means of flight efficiency parameters. The simulation results showed that the impact is dependent on the type of operation. High-altitude platform system flights and orbital launches cause the largest deviations in flight distance, flight duration and fuel consumption. Higher airspace operation parameters, including location, time, and duration, strongly affect the impact on the conventional air traffic.