Total Energy-Based Perspective Flight Path Display for Aircraft Guidance along Complex Approach Trajectories

Energy awareness and precise energy management become important during complex approach trajectories. To deal with this complexity the pilot’s energy awareness can be increased by presenting him with explicit energy management information. The concepts of a so-called Total Energy Reference Profile (TERP) and ‘energy angle’ are defined in this paper and applied in the context of a perspective flight-path display. The resulting display presents aircraft independent energy management information fully integrated with the tunnel in the sky display and reveals five new and important energy cues. The design of the display is based on the Ecological Interface Design (EID) principles, supported by the Abstraction Hierarchy (AH) derived for the aircraft manual control task in (Amelink, van Paassen, Mulder & FLach, 2003). A preliminary evaluation shows that pilots can successfully fly approach trajectories using only the energy management information.