Dr. Kathy Abbott
Flight Path Management: A Unifying Framework
Over the past decades, numerous reports, studies, and recommendations have been generated among industry groups, research institutions, and regulators addressing safety concerns related to manual flight, managing automated systems, and pilot monitoring. The topics are considered to be part of Flight Path Management (FPM), defined here as the planning, execution, and assurance of the guidance and control of aircraft trajectory and energy.
The Federal Aviation Administration has developed a new advisory circular (AC) to address FPM. The FAA developed the draft AC to provide guidance and recommended practices for operators to implement operational procedures and pilot training for Flight Path Management. The guidance was derived from extensive FAA and industry studies of accidents and incidents where ineffective FPM was causal or contributory and from the inputs mentioned above, including the recommendations of the Air Carrier Training Aviation Rulemaking Committee.
The FAA considers FPM to provide a unifying framework for operations and training to meet the regulatory requirements in Part 121, its appendices and Part 135. Topics addressed in this initial version of the advisory circular include manual flight operations (MFO), managing automated systems, pilot monitoring (PM), and energy management (EM). This presentation will discuss each of the four topics.
