Honeywell International Inc.

Alliedsignal Inc.

Howard Glover

Steven C Johnson

John J Poe

C Don Bateman

Systems and methods for alerting to traffic proximity in the airport environment. Knowledge of the geographic position, speed, rate of change of speed, heading (or track-angle) and/or altitude of own-aircraft (or vehicle) and another, potentially conflicting aircraft (or vehicle) are used to calculate a predicted distance between the two aircraft (or vehicles) at given point of time in the future. If separation distance is predicted to be less than a predetermined acceptable value, then an alert message (aural, visual or both) is issued to the pilot or operator of the vehicle.

Systems and methods for alerting to traffic proximity in the airport environment

A method for determining a currently obtainable climb gradient of an aircraft by determining an estimated aircraft weight as a function of phase of flight, determining the current aircraft weight as a function of the current dynamic pressure, the unaccelerated lift of the aircraft, and the wing surface area of the aircraft during steady-state flight, updating said estimated aircraft weight as a function of the current aircraft weight, determining the current lift and drag coefficients of the aircraft, determining currently available aircraft thrust, and estimating a currently obtainable maximum climb gradient as a function of said thrust, current weight, current lift and drag coefficients.

Method for determining a currently obtainable climb gradient of an aircraft

An aircraft terrain warning generator is provided having a terrain and obstacle warning envelope having a lower boundary formed according to the lesser of the current aircraft flight path angle and the obtainable climb gradient.

Growing community of inventors

Bellevue, WA, United States of America

Howard Glover