Flight Plan Conformity Check for Aviation Safety
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing flight plans may contain errors that go unnoticed by the crew, especially in complex plans with many waypoints, leading to potential safety issues due to unidentified discontinuities or untenable segments.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that receive a flight plan or flight plan alteration, compare it to predefined rules and criteria for best practices and aircraft-specific requirements, and communicate violations to crew members via visual indicia, including severity levels.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a pilot manually reviews and validates a complex flight plan with hundreds of waypoints, then the flight plan can be accepted before execution, but errors and discontinuities may go unnoticed due to the complexity and volume of data
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an automated validation system that acts as an intermediary between flight plan creation and pilot review. This system includes a database of flight plan rules and criteria, a validation module that automatically checks uploaded flight plans against these rules, and a interface that presents validation results to the pilot. The intermediary system handles the complex analysis of hundreds of waypoints, identifying discontinuities and rule violations that would be difficult for a pilot to detect manually, while still maintaining pilot oversight and approval authority.
2Measurement precision
If automated validation systems are implemented to check flight plans, then error detection capability is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The validation system is segmented into distinct functional modules: a flight plan rule database that stores validation criteria, a validation module that performs the actual checking, a result generation module that compiles findings, and a user interface module that presents information to pilots. Each module has a specific, well-defined function, making the overall complex system manageable through modular design. The rule database is further segmented into different categories of flight plan rules (e.g., altitude constraints, route requirements, aircraft-specific criteria).
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses digital representations and models of flight plans and validation rules rather than requiring physical manual checking. Flight plans are processed as structured data that can be automatically analyzed, and validation results are presented as digital indicators (visual, auditory, or tactile) rather than requiring manual interpretation of physical documents. This copying approach enables automated processing while maintaining fidelity to the original flight plan data.
3Reliability
If thorough validation of flight plans is performed to identify all potential errors, then safety is improved, but the time required for validation increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary automated validation checks immediately when a flight plan is uploaded, before the pilot begins manual review. By pre-identifying obvious errors, discontinuities, and rule violations through automated scanning, the system reduces the time the pilot would need to spend on basic validation tasks. The pilot can then focus their attention on reviewing and interpreting the validation results rather than performing initial error detection.
Solution Approach 2:
The validation system provides immediate feedback to the pilot through multiple channels (visual indicators, auditory alerts, tactile feedback) when errors or rule violations are detected. This feedback includes the specific nature of the problem, its location in the flight plan, and its severity. The system may also provide guidance on how to correct identified issues. This targeted feedback approach allows for rapid identification and correction of problems without requiring time-consuming manual analysis of the entire flight plan.
Data Source
AI summary
Whenever an avionics computer system receives a flight plan, the avionics computer system performs rules-based conformity checks with respect to a predefine set of rules/thresholds. The rules may be general aviation best practices (no rate of elevation change beyond some threshold, no single change in direction beyond some threshold, etc.) or specific to the aircraft (no violation of an operational ceiling, no violation of some defined fuel reserve, etc.). Violations of the rules and criteria are communicated to crew members via visual indicia of such violations, including the relative severity.