Comment Re:Kinematics (Score 3, Interesting) 283
I was part of the team that developed the short-term collision alert system for Swanick, UK. This type of prediction is unnecessary and not very useful to air traffic controllers, particularly in Europe, where each air space has a different way of dealing with traffic.
For example, pilots want to get their aircraft to specific altitudes to conserve fuel (usually around 29,000ft). In the UK, ATC keeps strict vertical and horizontal seperations, in France, they just let them hit the altitude they want, then play a complicated game of checkers with the planes.
In Greece, seperation over certain space is maintained by transponders on the ground, so spacing has to be a lot more forgiving, which also limits the throughput of the aircraft.
So in principle a plane, will fly at an optimum altitude and at a certain speed at that altitude primarily to conserve fuel. However when coming into an airport, control of altitude (and speed to a certain extent) will be handed to local ATC.
Of note, ATC will 'hand off' a plane to the next air space by assigning a new frequency upon which the plane should be communicating. Planes fly with a specifi flight plan.
Now unguided rockets.....that's a completely different matter.