Aircraft Fuel Efficiency Tunnel Display for Pilots and Dispatchers

A flight planning decision support method, comprising:

• accepting input data related to an aircraft, the input data including (i) flight plan data that includes a flight path of the aircraft, (ii) state of the aircraft along the flight path, (iii) environmental data, and (iv) an aircraft performance model of the aircraft;
• calculating aircraft performance and an objective function for a range of altitudes and speeds as a function of the input data;
• and
• causing a user interface to display aircraft performance contour boundaries and a vertical routing path that meets the objective function to provide graphical representations to support a user's planning decisions of fuel efficiency of the aircraft versus time of arrival of the aircraft along the flight path.

A computer program product comprising:

• a non-transitory computer-readable medium configured to store instructions for performing flight planning decision support, the instructions, when loaded and executed by a processor, cause the processor to:
• accept input data related to an aircraft, the input data including (i) flight plan data that includes a flight path of the aircraft, (ii) state of the aircraft along the flight path, (iii) environmental data, and (iv) an aircraft performance model of the aircraft;
• calculate aircraft performance and an objective function for a range of altitudes and speeds as a function of the input data;
• and
• cause a user interface to display aircraft performance contour boundaries and a vertical routing path that meets the objective function to provide graphical representations to support a user's planning decisions of fuel efficiency of the aircraft versus time of arrival of the aircraft along the flight path.

A flight planning decision support apparatus, comprising:

• an input module configured to accept input data related to an aircraft, the input data including (i) flight plan data that includes a flight path of the aircraft, (ii) state of the aircraft along the flight path, (iii) environmental data, and (iv) an aircraft performance model of the aircraft;
• a calculation module configured to calculate aircraft performance and an objective function for a range of altitudes and speeds as a function of the input data;
• and
• a display module configured to cause a user interface to display aircraft performance contour boundaries based on the objective function to provide graphical representations to support a user's planning decisions of fuel efficiency of the aircraft versus time of arrival of the aircraft along the flight path.