A Fast and Flexible Emergency Trajectory Generator – Enhancing Emergency Geometric Planning with Aircraft Dynamics

We present an automated emergency trajectory generator to compute the best emergency trajectory for a given landing site. A combination of the optimized version of the rapidly exploring random tree algorithm and Dubins paths is used to compute a path connecting the aircraft position with the landing site, which avoids the obstacles in the way. Then, this path is used as input for a trajectory prediction (TP) algorithm, which computes a four-dimensional trajectory by taking into account the current aircraft performance and weather. The set of vertical profiles considered in the TP has been designed in order to cover the widest possible range of emergency situations. Moreover, the aircraft intents considered in these profiles are chosen by taking into account the operational requirements of the air traffic operation system and the input of the flight crew. Among these profiles, two have been tested during the study, to verify the result of the proposed algorithm and its computing time, which is one of the main success criteria. This concept is expected to be part of an advanced flight management system on-board function to help the pilot take efficient and effective decisions in emergency situations and adverse conditions.