Analysis of Flight Technical Error on Straight,
Final Approach Segments
August 2003
Dr. Benjamin S. Levy, The MITRE Corporation
Dr. Pradip Som, Federal Aviation Administration, AFS-420
Dr. Richard Greenhaw, Federal Aviation Administration, AFS-420
ABSTRACT
The Flight Procedure Standards Branch (AFS-420) of the
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is responsible for
developing the criteria to apply to procedures designed
and implemented in the National Airspace System (NAS).
With the introduction of the Required Navigation
Performance (RNP) capability of modern aircraft,
development of criteria for the containment widths, or
minimum amount of protected airspace needed, requires
the accurate statistical analysis of the magnitude of position error for these RNP systems. The position error is
represented by the Total System Error (TSE) which is a
combination of the Flight Technical Error (FTE) and the
Navigation System Error (NSE). The NSE is the error in
position due to navigation such as Global Positioning
System (GPS), Distance Measuring Equipment
(DME)/DME, or Very High Frequency (VHF)
Omnidirectional Range (VOR)/DME. FTE is the
difference between the position estimated by the Flight
Management System (FMS) and the desired aircraft
position.
The magnitude of these errors depend upon whether the
aircraft is turning, changing speed, flying straight and
level, the autopilot mode (e.g., engaged) and navigation
mode (e.g., lateral and/or vertical). This paper focuses
only on the statistical analysis of FTE for aircraft flying
straight, final approach segments.
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flight technical error, SAAARs, containment surfaces, statistics, Johnson curves, serial correlation, cross-correlation
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