Thales

Philippe Chaix

François Coulmeau

Xavier Blanchon

Christophe Caillaud

Emmanuel Dewas

Jean-Pierre Arethens

Sonia Vautier

Benoît Dacre-Wright

Pierre Gamet

Marc Riedinger

Alex Bourdon

Alexandre Grattard

Manuel Gutierez-Castaneda

Franck Prenot

The invention relates to a method and a system for aircraft navigation along a predetermined airway, including an on-board navigation system supplying a positioning integrity of the aircraft during flight relative to said airway respecting an expected position precision performance level, and at least one on-board radio receiver on the aircraft suitable for communicating with at least one land-based radio beacon suitable for supplying a distance of the aircraft relative to said radio beacon. The system includes a module configured to obtain, from a current position of the aircraft and stored data, a tuple of radio beacons to be used, a module configured to obtain a distance measurement of the aircraft relative to each of the N radio beacons of said tuple, a module configured to compute an integrity position from distance measurements obtained by a predetermined computing method, and a module configured to use the computed integrity position as current integrity position.

Method and system for aircraft navigation

A method for managing the trajectory of an aircraft implemented by computer comprises the steps consisting of: receiving the aeroplane performance levels, receiving a flight plan, receiving ground relief data, receiving weather data, determining the coordinates of a safety point according to the aeroplane performance levels, the relief data and the weather data, the safety point making it possible to continue the flight according to a predefined SID landing trajectory in case of outage of one or more engines of the aircraft. Developments are described, notably in computation of the spatial coordinates of the safety point, the management of several safety points and/or of EOSID trajectories, the insertion or the activation of an EOSID trajectory including in the absence of engine outage, the management of the Disarm Point flight plan point. System and software aspects are described.

Managing the trajectory of an aircraft in case of engine outage

A method and device establishes trajectory planning, predictions and guidance so as to obtain the satisfaction of a time constraint (RTA). This objective is achieved by undertaking a computation of a trajectory up to the point where the flypast time constraint applies, on the basis of a profile of altitude and speeds, and then by computing the profile of speeds and altitudes making it possible, throughout the computed trajectory, to comply with the RTA. The method is also a method for readapting the trajectory and the vertical profile when during a mission, the data outside the aeroplane have caused the time predictions to drift and the constraint is no longer complied with under the initial speeds and trajectory assumptions.

Method of planning, trajectory computation, predictions and guidance for compliance with an aircraft flypast time constraint

A method of flight management of an aircraft aimed at reaching a constrained point on a predetermined lateral trajectory assumed to be followed by the aircraft, at a required time of arrival RTA to within an absolute tolerance. The method including calculating a flight plan to be followed and a homing flight plan and when the estimated time of arrival ETA based on the homing flight plan strays from an absolute tolerance with respect to the calculation required time of arrival RTAc, calculating a new calculation required time of arrival NRTAc dependent on the calculation required time of arrival RTAc and a function f of the difference between the calculation required time of arrival RTAc and the estimated time of arrival ETA, and replacing the calculation required time of arrival RTAc with the new calculation required time of arrival NRTAc, before recalculating a flight plan to be followed.

Method for aiding the management of a flight with a view to adhering to a time constraint

The invention consists in merging together the predicted and measured meteorological data to supply them to the flight prediction calculation system so as to smooth the discontinuities brought about in the prior art by the simple update which is carried out. This merging is advantageously done by linear weighting of the data, the weighting coefficient depending upon the positioning in vertical and horizontal distances between the predicted point and the aeroplane in relation to chosen thresholds.

System and method for merging meteorological data predicted and measured on an aircraft

A navigation database comprises a first set of elements comprising airports, beacons and waypoints; a second set of elements comprising procedures; and a third set of elements comprising routes. The method comprises a step of creating a pair of indices comprising an index comprising the elements of the three sets; identifier, a type and a functional identifier; a first list of pointers to the memory address where the elements are stored; a pre-index comprising a list of code, each code corresponding to the first characters of each element, the codes being indexed by a family of attributes of elements; a second list of pointers to the identifier of the first element in the first index.

Methods of accessing a navigation database

The invention relates to the field of civil aviation and, more specifically, relates to the flight management systems, more commonly known by the English acronym FMS. The method for assisting in the management of the flight of an aircraft in order to keep to a time constraint according to the present invention allows for a control of the keeping to the time constraint that presents a rapid dynamic, by avoiding as far as possible having the estimated time of arrival (ETA) at a particular point (P) able to drift relative to a required time of arrival (RTA) at said particular point (P), thanks to the use of a maneuvering margin (M) granted to the guidance module of the aircraft.

Method for assisting in the management of the flight of an aircraft in order to keep to a time constraint

Method for assisting in the flight management of an aircraft aiming to reach a constraint point on a predetermined lateral trajectory that is assumed to have to be followed by the aircraft, at a required time of arrival RTA, said aircraft occupying a current position defined by a current altitude with a current horizontal speed. The method including, when it follows a rallying flight plan, calculating a new rallying flight plan following the lateral trajectory to be followed and including a new estimated speed profile different from the estimated speed profile over at least one update area, the new estimated speed profile including, over said update areas, either a value greater than that of the estimated speed profile, if the arrival time difference is positive, or a value less than that of the estimated speed profile, if the arrival time difference is negative.

Method for assisting in the management of a flight in order to keep to a time constraint

A method for determining the quantity of fuel in an aircraft and an optimization criterion such as a cost index, notably used in an FMS, making it possible to maintain a time requirement of the RTA type, comprising a first step of computing the optimization criterion CIas a function of the aircraft weight GWvia a method of the RTA type and a second step of computing the weight of the aircraft GWas a function of the optimization criterion Ccomputed in the first computation step and the aircraft weight GW, executed by successive iterations, until the estimated flight time resulting from the computed parameters after the second computation step makes it possible to observe the time requirement to within a determined criterion &#x3b4;t, a last step determining the pair of values of aircraft weight GWand of performance criterion CIallowing an optimal fuel payload and the maintenance of the RTA.

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Tournefeuille, France

Philippe Chaix