Copyright D.P. Browne 2011
Vertical Flight Planning
The FMGC requires certain information in order to start the calculations for performance. This data either comes form the flight crew or from the FMGC data base. There are 3 categories :
Strategic Data
LZFW CG/ZFW
The flight crew enter the Zero Fuel Weight CG and the Zero Fuel Weight into the boxes for the LSK 1R. Enteries are XX or XX.X for CG and /XXX for ZFW. They may be combined as XX/XXX
Once the ZFW data is entered, a Block Fuel prompt appears at LSK 2R
BLOCK
This can either be manually entered, or computed by the FMGC.
The field appears after the ZFW has been entered.
Showing ZFW Cg/ZFW 24.1/155 ready for entry to LSK1R
In order for the FMGS to compute performance criteria such as target altitudes, econ speeds, time predictions etc, the flight crew must enter the ZWCG, ZFW and Block fuel on the INIT B page. Once this is done the magenta information on the flight plan page becomes green.
Strategic Data
Tactical Data
Weather Data
Tactical data
This data consists of the flight phases, Auto thrust settings, Autopilot modes, route events etc. The data is used to transition the performance calculations from one flight phase to another and to apply appropriate speed or altitude limits during the flight.
Weather Data
This data consists of the wind speeds, ground temperatures and cruise flight level conditions.
Wind Speeds entered on the Wind Pages
Sea level QNH at the destination entered on the Performance Approach page
Surface temperature at the destination entered on the Performance Approach page
Autothrust mode changes
Route events of passing T/C, T/D etc
Economy Speed settings
Vertical limitations