TECHNICAL FIELD

Embodiments of the subject matter described herein relate generally to interactive aircraft display functionality. More particularly, embodiments of the subject matter relate to time-based, integrated aircraft display functionality that enables user interaction with and awareness of multiple data sources from a display onboard an aircraft.

BACKGROUND

The flight crew of modern, highly-automated aircraft are tasked with maintaining awareness of many flight critical parameters. Pilot workload is often high, requiring the performance of multiple simultaneous tasks. The flight crew uses several systems onboard an aircraft and may be required to direct their gaze in multiple directions to complete necessary tasks, obtain required information, and maintain safe and effective operation of the aircraft. Directing the gaze of a single pilot toward one particular system has an opportunity cost in terms of information processing in flight operations, an inability to attend and glean flight critical information from other displays or instrumentation. Currently, the management of information, tasks, time, and flight path are all performed by the skill of two pilots in most flight operations, and a significant reduction in pilot workload is needed to enable single pilot operations, an emerging industry interest given advances in automation and changes in pilot demographics and availability.

Hence, it is desirable to reduce pilot workload and/or to increase efficiency of pilot information processing and task completion. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.

SUMMARY

This summary is provided to describe select concepts in a simplified form that are further described in the Detailed Description. This summary is not intended to identify key or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.

A flight deck system for providing task management assistance in managing the flight path to the flight crew is provided. The system comprises one or more processors configured by programming instructions on non-transient computer readable media. The system is configured to: mine flight plan data for a current flight plan, navigational data, and vertical situation display (VSD) data from one or more aircraft systems; obtain notification data items originating from onboard avionics systems and from systems external to onboard avionics systems that indicate upcoming conditions that will affect the current flight plan; automatically analyze the mined flight plan data and the notification data items to identify a sensed deviation condition; automatically identify an aircraft-related deviation condition from an aircraft failure event; receive flight crew notification of a non-sensed deviation condition; automatically determine one or more modifications to the current flight plan to generate a plurality of flight plan deviation options to accommodate a sensed deviation condition, an aircraft-related deviation condition, or a non-sensed deviation condition; and present graphical elements representative of the flight plan deviation options to the flight crew on an integrated interactive graphical user interface (GUI) comprising a timeline GUI, a map GUI, and a VSD GUI displayed on an aircraft display.

A method in a flight deck system for providing task management assistance in managing the flight path to the flight crew is provided. The method comprises: mining flight plan data for a current flight plan, navigational data, and vertical situation display (VSD) data from one or more aircraft systems; obtaining notification data items originating from onboard avionics systems and from systems external to onboard avionics systems that indicate upcoming conditions that will affect the current flight plan; automatically analyzing the mined flight plan data and the notification data items to identify a sensed deviation condition when a sensed deviation condition exists; automatically identifying an aircraft-related deviation condition from an aircraft failure event when an aircraft failure event exists; receiving flight crew notification of a non-sensed deviation condition when a non-sensed deviation condition exists; automatically determining one or more modifications to the current flight plan to generate a plurality of flight plan deviation options to accommodate a sensed deviation condition, an aircraft-related deviation condition, or a non-sensed deviation condition; and presenting graphical elements representative of the flight plan deviation options to the flight crew on an integrated interactive graphical user interface (GUI) comprising a timeline GUI, a map GUI, and a VSD GUI displayed on an aircraft display.

Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the preceding background.

