Generating air traffic control (ATC) requests on an onboard or an offboard avionics device with a graphical display

A system for generating an air traffic control (ATC) downlink message, the system comprising:

• at least one avionics device with a human-machine interface with a graphical display, a processor and a non-transitory computer readable medium that stores an ATC interface application;
• a communication management unit (CMU), flight management system (FMS) or communication management function (CMF), coupled to the at least one avionics device, wherein the CMU, FMS, or CMU includes a processor and a non-transitory computer readable medium that stores an air traffic control (ATC) application;
• wherein the ATC interface application, when run on the processor of the at least one avionics device, causes the processor to gather data for an ATC downlink message, to generate the ATC downlink message and to send the ATC downlink message to the ATC application on the CMU, FMS, or CMF;
• and
• wherein the ATC application, when run on the processor of the CMU, causes the processor to send the ATC downlink message to an ATC center, and to store an indication that the ATC downlink message was generated by the at least one avionics device.

A method for generating an air traffic control (ATC) downlink message, the method comprising:

• receiving input on at least one of an onboard graphical display avionics device or an offboard avionics device to request a change to a current flight parameter based on an active state of an aircraft;
• generating, on one of the onboard graphical display avionics device or the offboard avionics device, a call to an air traffic control application running on a communications management unit (CMU) or communications management function (CMF) or flight management system (FMS), the call based on the input;
• receiving, on the one of the onboard graphical display avionics device or the offboard avionics device that generated the call, the ATC downlink message from the air traffic control application running on the CMU, CMF, or FMS in response to the call;
• displaying, on the one of the onboard graphical display avionics device or the offboard avionics device, the ATC downlink message;
• and
• when the ATC downlink message is approved to be sent, passing the ATC downlink message to the air traffic control application on the CMU, CMF, or FMS.