Just On Time – A Concept for iPad Enabled Timely Accurate Continuous Descent Operations

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a concept to guide a transport type aircraft on a continuous descent while meeting a required time of arrival at a metering fix with an error of less than 10 seconds. This includes the development of the basic principle as well as a simulator study with three pilots. Following the improvement of the simulation model and the guidance algorithm a flight test campaign confirmed the performance of the implemented prototype and the acceptance of the concept by the pilots that was already seen after the simulator study. The development of the concept as well as the simulator campaign was done in the frame of the Clean Sky project sponsored by the European Commission. After promising results from the simulator campaign the work was continued as DLR internal project and the flight test results were made available to the Clean Sky consortium.