Copyright by

ii The term "general aviation " accounts for all civilian flights that are not scheduled (or chartered) passenger airlines. Loss of control incidents in flight are the primary cause of fatal general aviation accidents. By definition, a loss of control event is a preventable occurrence where a pilot should have maintained or regained control of their aircraft. Giving a pilot sufficient warning to correct dangerous situations is crucial in preventing loss of control. Existing warning methods are based on physical margins of aircraft limitations and do not directly consider how much time is left to act before loss of control. This research focuses on the development of a method that uses real-time inertial and aerodynamic data to calculate and improve warnings of flight envelope limitations. X-Plane 10, a realistic flight simulator, was used to simulate the flight of a Cessna 172, a common general aviation aircraft. The flight model of X-Plane has been compared to empirical data with favorable results, indicating X-Plane is a reasonable platform on which to investigate an active warning system. The development of an X-Plane softwar