Study on aircraft diversion path under scattered thunderstorm condition

In-flight encounters with thunderstorms pose a serious threat to aircraft safety. Thunderstorms often bring about turbulence, strong winds, and downburst, all of which can severely impact the safety of flight operations. Scattered thunderstorm is a type of thunderstorm pattern, which has strong randomness and locality, and the precipitation area is relatively scattered. When an aircraft encounters thunderstorms, a change of route is recommended to avoid the thunderstorm area. Here, we propose a novel approach to design a diversion path. This paper determines the flight restricted area by considering thunderstorm hazard level, and determines whether the aircraft can pass the restricted area. A diversion model with the minimum number of diversion points and the shortest distance as the objective was established to study the optimal diversion strategy of flights in scattered thunderstorm, and the practicability of the diversion method was verified according to the calculation example, providing effective reference for pilots and controllers’ command decisions. At the same time, it can reduce the workload of air traffic controllers and pilots in thunderstorm weather to a certain extent.