Patent ID: 8639397

Claim:
A process for determining a cost-minimized flight route for an aircraft between a starting point and an end point, taking into account costs associated with the flight route and limitations of the flight route caused by the aircraft, the process comprising: determining, by a processor, a raster set which comprises topographical raster points between the starting point and the end point; determining, by the processor, costs associated with respective raster points of the raster set; determining, by the processor, N nodes for each raster point of at least one subset of the raster set; wherein i) the N nodes are associated with approach directions of the aircraft to the raster point; ii) possible take-off directions of the raster point are determined as a function of the approach directions; and iii) said possible take-off directions are defined taking into account a turning radius of the aircraft; and determining, by the processor, the cost-minimized flight route between the starting point and the end point by means of a shortest path algorithm; wherein x) for a particular raster point, only k most cost-effective nodes are taken into account; and y) k≧3 and k is less than N.