Suggested Citation:
Sarigul-Klijn, Nesrin and Anthony White (2011) Novel Probabilistic Dynamic Safety Metric Formulations for Flight Path Determination. Journal of Aerospace Engineering 227 (1), 185 - 198

This article details a novel method for the determination of safe flight paths dynamically following an in-flight distress event. The method is based on probabilistic safety metrics which also include the touchdown and evacuation/rescue phases after landing. Two case studies simulating in-flight distress events, one from the west and the other from the east coast are presented using these formulations for a quantitative analysis. It is found that the nearest landing sites are not always the safest ones showing the benefits of the newly developed safety metrics. Finally, the path safety levels are plotted as a function of mission safety probability values using innovative polar plots that provide useful information to pilot.

Keywords:  In-flight distress event; flight trajectory reshaping; dynamic safety metric; optimization; probabilistic approach