Maths in the cockpit

clownface95

I was thinking about how aircraft are been built today , and how technology has taken such a keen role in the development of aircraft systems , I'm curious to no if there is much mental calculations involved when flying a commercial aircraft today ? Or is allot of it taken care of by onboard computers !

Stovepipe

Practical Maths in a cockpit: the load supervisor calculates the trim setting and passes the load sheet to the captain, who reads it, checks it for accuracy and signs it off. The engineer or refueller dials up the final fuel load on the refuelling panel and after the fuel is on, the engineer calculates the weight of the fuel and fills those figures into the logbook and the crew then input those figures into the performance page of the computer on the aircraft. The crew have already worked out the amount of runway required for take off, taking into account the wind and weather and condition of the runway (even before they get to the aircraft) and essentially what they do just before flight is entering all of these figures into the Flight management computer, instead of the old way of writing it out on a sheet (filling in boxes to get answer X). Once they get airborne, it's all about time and consumption. How long will it take to get there? What about the actual wind and it's effect on ground speed and fuel burn? What about ATC giving us a diversion or a few more laps of the hold? Most of it is just basic maths; add, subtract, divide, multiply. If you are flying long-haul and have an engine failure at high altitude, then you are into things like drift-down calculations but it is very rare and more often than not, the aircraft is better at the maths than you are. A PPL going on a navex in a Cessna does the same sums but on a smaller, slower scale. You don't need to be a genius doing Honours calculus to do this stuff but it does take a bit of practise.

basill

Three times table is about as difficult as the maths gets flying an Airbus.

Joe 90

basill wrote: »

Three times table is about as difficult as the maths gets flying an Airbus.

Is that for outbound on an ADF hold?:)

Stovepipe

It also falls back to Rules of thumb like the 1 in 60 rule or 3 x the knot speed of the wind across the hold. a lot of the time, it's down to experience and you do get to know what numbers work for your particular aircraft. For example, performance figures for calculating take off distance for a 172 are based on a new aircraft on a flat level hard surface in kansas. Not a wet field in Ireland in a 30-year old 172...