How do airline pilots navigate? Do they plan it out manually or rely totally on computers?

Question

What systems do you use at the moment and what is planned for the future? I've heard things about Boeing and Airbus FANS-1/A is that being used just now or do they have to wait for everyone to adopt this? Thanks for any constructive replies. Cheers!

Answer 1

Prior to leaving the gate, we will get our ATC clearance from clearance delivery. We will take that information and compare it with our filed flight plan and load the correct route into our FMS (flight management system). Once we takeoff, we can either hand fly the airplane or let the autopilot fly it. Either way, we will follow the course line that is displayed on our PFD (primary flight display). If we are climbing to an altitude above FL280, then we must let the autopilot fly the airplane. This is due to that airspace being designated as RVSM (reduced vertical seperation something). Sorry, can't remember what the M stands for. If ATC amends our route we will change it in the FMS and the autopilot will follow our commands. Once we descend into the terminal area, we will usually get radar vectors to intercept the final approach course. At that point we will no longer be using the FMS but will rely on ground based Navaids (unless we are on a GPS approach) to guide us to the runway. Contrary to popular belief, most airplanes will not land themselves. Only the largest ones do that.

It is really pretty straightforward and not too difficult to program. If you can use a computer, you can figure out how to program an FMS. Like a previous person said, most of our routes are preloaded into the computer and we just need to tell it which route we want. There are occasions when we have to input an entire route but that is rare and is mainly when we do a charter between to airports that we normally don't serve.

Hope this helped.

Answer 2

Most airliners use the Flight Management System for their operations. The FMS is divided into Functional Areas like Flight Planning, Performance, Vertical Navigation, Lateral Navigations etc and the names are descriptive enough. The Flight Planning gives the interface to plan your journey that includes the origin airport, (with SIDs or Standard Instrumented Departures) waypoints, holding patterns if required, and destination airports (with STAR, Standard Terminal Arrival). Most airlines have predefined flight plans called Company Routes that can be loaded into the FMS by the pilots.

If the aircraft is so equipped, the autopilot, when engaged, gets its input from the Lateral and Vertical Navigation functional areas and guides the aircraft on the selected flight plan. The FMS gets position updates from GPS, Navaids, IRS, INS whichever is available and corrects the flight path if it varies from the flight plan. On some configurations, the pilot need not do anything once the autopilot is engaged. The FMS will tune for navaids, ATC frequencies as the arcraft approaches an airport, computes the aircrafts performance and makes predictions and so on. And if required, the pilot can modify the flight plan, insert a holding pattern or change the destination, the FMS will guide the aircraft on the new settings. The FMS is effectively the navigator in this case.

If not equipped with FMS, then it is traditional ways, depending on charts, navigation aids like VOR, Loran or painstaking mapping using GPS and all.

Answer 3

Most modern airliners have what is called an ADIRU, or Air Data Intertial Reference Unit. In this box there are 3 sets of laser ring gyros and 3 sets of accelerometers internal to the unit. They are there of course for redundacy if one fails. They use this data to calculate inertial reference (IR) data. A 737 has 2 Adrius. A 777 has 3. Sometimes they are called IRU or Intertial Reference Units.

At some airport terminals, you can see a lat-long on the side of the terminal itself. The pilots can enter this information into the FMC so the Adirus have a point of reference. It takes about 8 minutes to align the system and when alignment is complete, you will get the artificial horizon display on the primary flight displays.

Airlines update the FMC data bases with a data loader. A new set from Jeppesen is available from time to time for a section of the world the airline travels. Most will have relative airports in its system but not all. The FMC's don't have that much storage space.

I haven't seen too much FANS (future air Navigation) yet. GPS comes on line when you turn on the IRU's. The GPS lat-long is displayed on the FMC. We usually use that to put into the Pos Init page to align the Adirus.

As for route plotting, our pilots have different routes and they are also in the FMC data bases. When autopilot is on and a route is inputed in the FMC, the course is shown on the navigation display along with waypoints.

Answer 4

The pilot just puts the flight plan into the planes computer and the plane can fly itself. A Pilot told me that the boing aircraft can take off fly to its destination and land without a pilot once the information is put into the computer. It will also take evasive action in bad weather. But he added, would you fly in a plane that had no pilot.

Answer 5

Something called and fmc is a comuter that you put in all the data weather etc and get it in the navigational display if you have flight sim 2004 I recommend the pmdg 747 and 737 it has an fmc like the real one


Cheers

Answer 6

we basically use GPS. From these co-ordinates we know where we are and since we know the 'fixed' co-ordinates of waypoints/airports/navigational aids etc we can plot a map of where we are and where we want to go. There are fixed 'routes' in the sky that airplanes fly along and we have to be separated by a certain amount which is usually 10mins. This is equivalent to our freeways on the road where one car follows the one in front. The GPS updates our position frequently (more than once a second). FANS isn't being used now, it certainly is the way of the future but it's very complicated like how do you maintain separation when everyone is now flying their own separate route which would be directly from the departure airport to the destination airport. Imagine people driving cars directly to their destinations from their houses (imagine cars that dont have to follow roads kinda like airplanes). How do you separate them? I want to drive to the supermarket, someone wants to drive to the petrol station, someone else wants to drive to their granmothers house, we are all cris-crossing eachother. That's one of the problems.

Answer 7

They have a operating system that consists of a worldwide map, the pilots are trained and breifeed about their mission before they take off. Sometimes, they depend on auto-pilot to take them to a certain area or altitude. The system is basically based on GPS (Global Positioning System) but more highly advanced helping the pilot locate and detect what type of land is there. When you go on a plane and watch the Moving Map Systems that provides you information of your flight, that is what pilots use but more highly advanced.

Answer 8

We typically use a combination of computers and real "old-school" navigation. Most of our position data is gained by GPS, but we still navigate using point-to-point VOR airways and most of us actually pull out charts to check routes and make sure everything is done properly.

Answer 9

A vast majority of airline routes are preplanned into the NAV computers. If they aren't held in permanent memory, they are loaded via PCMCIA slots or similar input devices.

Answer 10

well first the pilots have to do a little manual work themselves planning out the routes and everything but after that they enter the course and destination points on the computer and it tells them prety much everything