Jet Transport Systems AS 411
FMS Paper
Jooney Jung,
November 20, 2014

Throughout history humans have been traveling from one place to another. Whether it was for exploration, transportation, or vacation; the ways of travel has always been quickly advancing with technology. While cars, trains and boats have played an important role, the invention of flight has revolutionized the world of transportation. One of the most significant factor to be successful in flying is air navigation. This includes proper flight planning, being able to read the flight instruments to allow the pilot to fly from one destination to another without getting lost, breaking laws, and keeping everybody on board safe. During the beginning age of flights, “the pilots solely used their own senses to guide them, giving rise to the phrase ‘flying by the seat of your own pants’” (RAAF Museum, 2014). In 1929, James Doolittle proved the feasibility of instrument guided flying when he took off and landed entirely on instruments (info please, 2014). Early navigating consisted of a set of six essential flight instruments which includes: altimeter, airspeed indicator, turn and bank indicator, vertical speed indicator, artificial horizon, directional gyro/ heading indicator. In 1937 the British Royal Air Force chose this set of sex essential flight instruments which would remain the standard panel for the next 20 years (Flight Global, 2014). It was not until the late 1970’s where Honeywell pursued a new mission to develop a new flight management system that would allow pilots to plan and have the system automatically fly the aircraft. Their first developed flight management system was used on the commercial airliner Boeings 757 and 767. Honeywell was able to develop an FMS, its capabilities can be summarized into four functions: flight planning – defining where the airplane needs to fly, navigation – figuring out where the airplane is, along with its velocity, guidance – looking at where the airplane is supposed to be (flight plan), then using the current aircraft position and velocity to control the airplane to the flight plan and performance- calculate the optimum trajectory for the aircraft to fly and provide predictions for all the waypoints in the flight plan (Witwer, 2014). The FMS included two databases which was the performance database and the navigation database. The performance database consisted of two other databases giving information of the aerodynamic model of the airframe and the engine model that would give the detailed performance features of the propulsion system. The navigation database contained detailed information for possible flight plan waypoints, airports, departure and arrival procedures, and radio navigation aids (Witwer, 2014). The introduction to the flight management system navigation function was able to provide an improvement to the flight deck. This function operated automatic calculations of the position of the aircraft by using the ground based navigation aids to calculate a radio position, then mixing this position with the aircraft position calculated by the inertial reference system. The FMS even automatically determined the best navaids to use and tuned them automatically. (Honeywell, 2014).
Since the introduction and certification of the TERN-100 and the first standard FMS, and certification of the fully Vertical Navigation capabilities, Honeywell has been leading the aerospace industry in FMS. Honeywell is the standard FMS on the following Air Transport & Regional platforms currently in production or approaching entry into service: Airbus A300-600, A310, A318/319/320/321, A330, A340, A350, A380, Boeing 717, 747-8, 757, 767, 777, 787, Embraer ERJ-135/145, 170, 190, Fokker Fo-70, Fo-100 and McDonnell Douglas MD-80/90 series, MD-10/11 (Honeywell, 2014). While technology keeps on progressing, flight management systems will keep improving and provide more solutions for the challenging aircraft applications. Due to the invention of FMS it has made flying safer and efficient.
References
Flight Global. (2014, November 20). Retrieved from Flight Global: http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1937/1937%20-%202313.html
Honeywell. (2014, November 20). Retrieved from Honeywell: http://aerospace.honeywell.com/products/flight-management-systems info please. (2014, November 20). Retrieved from info please: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004537.html
RAAF Museum. (2014, November 20). Retrieved from RAAF Museum website: http://www.airforce.gov.au/raafmuseum/exhibitions/tech_disp.htm
Witwer, B. (2014, November 20). Honeywell. Retrieved from Honeywell Web site: http://aerospace.honeywell.com/blog/the-evolution-of-flight-management