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AFMS - Advanced Flight Managment System

4d trajectories are part of a cooperative flight management.

A significant improvement in capacity and efficiency of Air Traffic Management can be achieved by the integration of airborne and ground-based systems.

On the airborne side the Flight Management System (FMS) plays the most significant role. The strategic trajectory generation as well as the automatic guidance along this trajectory according to schedule is the domain of the conventional FMS. In the future its functionality is extended by cooperative elements, which connect traffic planning modules on the ground to flight planning systems on board the aircraft via data link.

As today’s FMS suffer from the poor or not existing interfacing with the aircrew and ATC an Advanced Flight Management System (AFMS) is being realized based on the Experimental FMS developed within the Programme for Harmonized Air traffic management Research in Eurocontrol (PHARE).

The main features of the AFMS are:

• Computation of 4D-trajectories on board considering constraints received via data link from ATC, aircraft performance parameters, economical criteria, etc.
• negotiation of the flight plan with ATC/ATM by means of data link connection,
• 4D-guidance capabilities along the negotiated trajectory, and
• FMS approaches including noise abatement procedures like Low Power Low Drag or Continuous Descent Approaches

The benefits of this new Flight Management System regarding capacity and safety were validated and demonstrated successfully during intense flight testing on board DLR’s Advanced Technology Testing Aircraft System ATTAS.