CONDITIONAL MINIMAL FLIGHT PATHS

Irving I. Gringorten

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	Paths of shortest flying time at a constant altitude of flight, known as minimal flight paths, have been given a sound basis in theory and are increasingly used in practice. A visit to Idlewild Airport, New York has revealed that four out of five airlines are engaged daily, almost hourly, in transoceanic minimal flight planning. The generally adopted method of minimal flight planning, the time-front method, was first proposed, to the best of this writer’s knowledge, in 1947 by Dr. D.T. Perkins of the United States Air Force. In 1949 three treatises were published, based on the timefront method, apparently independently of each other. Since Katz’s paper was published in Navigation2 it is assumed in this article that the reader is familiar with the time-front method. (The Perkins method is briefly described below in the example of Figures 2 and 3.)
Published in:	NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation, Volume 4, Number 7
Pages:	274 - 278
Cite this article:	Gringorten, Irving I., "CONDITIONAL MINIMAL FLIGHT PATHS", NAVIGATION: Journal of The Institute of Navigation, Vol. 4, No. 7, 1955, pp. 274-278.
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