Flying qualities of transport aircraft : precognitive or compensatory?

The introduction of fly-by-wire electronic flight control systems into transport aircraft has given the flying qualities engineer the opportunity to optimise the flying qualities of these aircraft for their specific tasks. With this technology has come the opportunity to introduce new technologies into the cockpit, such as non-linked or backfed sidesticks and non-backfed throttle levers. A comparative survey of airline pilots flying such a very high technology unconventional aircraft and a high technology but conventional aircraft suggests that these technologies may reduce the available channels of communication to the pilot in the very high technology aircraft, resulting in the possibility of reduced situational awareness. A closed loop piloted simulation survey of ten transport aircraft in current operation was undertaken which demonstrated that they all suffered from flying qualities deficiencies, limiting the performance that the pilot could achieve. In particular poor dynamics precluded the pilot adopting tight closed loop, or compensatory, control. Instead it was necessary to adopt a more open loop, precognitive, technique with medium frequency modulation, resulting in a degradation in landing performance. Through appropriate flight control system design it should be possible to produce aircraft that can be flown using the full range of control inputs from open to closed loop. The major study of this thesis assessed, through piloted simulation evaluations, the suitability of a wide range of longitudinal commanded response types for the approach and landing tasks. It was concluded that a response type that closely resembles that of angle of attack is optimum for these tasks due to its conventional characteristics of speed stability on the approach and monotonic stick forces in the flare. Such a system, appropriately implemented, should allow the transport aircraft pilot the full range of piloted control inputs, from open loop, precognitive, to closed loop, compensatory, resulting in improved landing performance.