An energy management display for general aviation safety enhancements

Loss of control (LOC) is the leading cause of general aviation (GA) accidents according to findings of the GA Joint Steering Committee (GAJSC). Main contributors to LOC are lack of awareness of the energy state and the angle-of attack, as well as margins from published limits of the aircraft. As part of their assessment, the GAJSC developed a GA Safety Plan and identified a list of safety enhancements (SEs). Several of these safety enhancements address the improvement of the pilot´s energy state awareness (e.g. better awareness of the aircraft´s angle-of-attack, and tools to help in achieving a stabilized approach and landing). This paper addresses a GA synthetic vision display concept that includes cues to help the pilots´ awareness of the aircraft energy state during various phases of flight including arrival, approach and landing. First, the glide path along the extended centerline of the selected runway is visualized on the primary flight display (PFD). Upon visual acquisition of this path, the pilot can choose to have the system compute and display an intercept-tunnel from the current position to the glide path along the extended centerline, and can use a flight path (FPM) marker to assess the aircraft motion with respect to the lateral and vertical path constraints. To assess the deviation of the current energy state from the desired energy state, a potential flight path angle (PFPA) indicator is included. The PFPA is an acceleration cue (along the flight path), and is scaled such that it indicates a change of flight path at the current power setting while holding speed constant. In addition to the PFPA, the display includes the maximum and minimum PFPA to make the pilots aware of the safety margins when applying maximum thrust and idle thrust. Finally, the display will include an indication of pitch limits with respect to the critical stall-(v_S0) and never-exceed-(v_NE) velocities In addition to a detailed explanation of the GA SVS co- cept and the added energy awareness cues, the paper will discuss the preparation for a human-in-the loop evaluation and flight test of the proposed concepts.