Multi-Destination Flight Plan Management with Intermediate Touchdown Points
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current flight management systems are inadequate for managing multi-destination aircraft flight plans, particularly in 'cabotage' missions, as they fail to provide accurate predictions for flight time and fuel consumption, optimal scheduling, and efficient handling of multiple touchdown points, leading to increased workload and time on the ground.
Innovation Solution
A method and system that construct a single multi-destination flight plan with intermediate touchdown points, each associated with dedicated arrival and departure procedures, allowing for dynamic updates and predictions, and a telescopic display to enhance ergonomics and data input.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If successive flight plans are constructed for each destination, then the flight management system can service multiple destinations, but the system cannot provide predictions for flight time and fuel consumption over the whole mission and increases crew workload
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple successive flight plans into a single integrated flight plan that encompasses all destinations. This allows the system to maintain one continuous flight plan structure while servicing multiple destinations, thereby preserving mission-wide prediction capabilities for flight time and fuel consumption that were previously lost when using separate successive flight plans.
Solution Approach 2:
The flight management system is enhanced to provide universal prediction capabilities across the entire multi-destination mission. The system can now generate and display predictions for flight time and fuel consumption for the complete mission sequence, not just for individual flight plan segments, making the prediction function applicable to the entire multi-destination operation.
2Adaptability or versatility
If successive flight plans are constructed, then each destination can be serviced, but optimal planning of schedules and refuelling operations is not enabled
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary calculation and planning of optimal schedules and refuelling operations for all destinations in advance. By having the complete multi-destination flight plan integrated, the system can pre-compute optimal arrival times, refuelling points, and fuel requirements for the entire mission sequence, enabling better operational planning before the flight begins.
3Adaptability or versatility
If successive flight plans are managed, then multiple destinations can be serviced, but the system monopolizes secondary flight plan memory and increases time on ground
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple destinations into a single flight plan structure, which reduces the number of separate flight plans that need to be stored and managed in memory. This merging approach frees up secondary flight plan memory resources and simplifies the overall memory management architecture of the flight management system.
Solution Approach 2:
The complete multi-destination flight plan is constructed and validated on the ground before departure. This preliminary action allows all destinations, waypoints, and procedures to be pre-loaded into the single flight plan, reducing the need for complex real-time memory operations during successive flight plan transitions and minimizing time spent on ground for system reconfiguration.
4Adaptability or versatility
If successive flight plans are constructed, then each leg can be defined, but effective insertion or deletion of intermediate destinations is not enabled
Solution Approach 1:
The single integrated flight plan is designed to be dynamically modifiable, allowing intermediate destinations to be inserted or deleted at any point in the sequence. The system provides dynamic update capabilities that automatically recalculate the flight plan parameters, predictions, and optimal routing when modifications are made, enabling flexible operational adjustments without requiring complete flight plan reconstruction.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for managing a multi-destination flight of an aircraft comprises a first step of constructing an initial flight plan of a mission between an endmost departure point and an endmost arrival point, having a series of temporally ordered waypoints. A second step comprises selecting one or more waypoints from among the waypoints, and transforming the selected waypoint or waypoints into one or more corresponding intermediate touchdown points, each intermediate touchdown point having the same initial coordinates as the corresponding waypoint of which it is the transform, and each intermediate touchdown point comprising a computerized relationship of association with a dedicated intermediate arrival procedure, ready to be activated.