Approach Stability from FDM Data

The Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Prescott Campus maintains a fleet of twenty four aircraft, which includes sixteen Cessna 172S NavIII and four Diamond DA42NG equipped with flight data monitoring software capability. Flight data is recorded on an SD card within the multi-function display (MFD) of the Garmin G1000 system, which records 64 different parameters at a 1 hertz frequency. Data is extracted from the MFD at intervals encompassing two weeks of flight time. The data can be used to detect and analyze non-compliance with company operational policies, performance trends for higher-risk operations such as landing and takeoff, and to create both textual and visual reports on any findings through software that was developed by Garmin and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. The data is consistently being used to track and note all parameters by the Office of Aviation Safety. Previously for A3IRCON, this information was used to display typical exceedances seen in daily operations, such as taxi speed limits and engine overspeeds. This year, a program has been written in MATLAB to take several of the recorded parameters that relate to the approach phase of a flight to determine the stability of the approach, and then further determine whether the approach concluded in a landing or not. There are four different determining factors used to decide whether the approach was stable or not, based on recommendations from Embry-Riddle flight manuals: pitch of the airplane, airspeed of the airplane, alignment of the airplane with the runway, and the approach angle. Each factor is determined by the program and written to an excel file for a user-friendly interface. In the future, outside factors such as pilot/instructor experience will also be taken into account