Concordia researchers Luis Rodrigues and Jesus Villarroel have recently created a mathematical formula that accurately recreates the calculations an FMS makes for a cruising Airbus 320, Phys.org reported.
Flight management systems are expensive and not easy to come by, but Rodrigues and Villarroel have created a formula that will be available to pilots, people in the airline industry, and people who study airspace.
“Our formula can easily be adapted for smaller aircraft — and then run in an app on a smartphone,” Rodrigues said. “Our formula is a square root of a sum of two terms, one of them depending on the weight of the aircraft. The formula can be used with data from a specific aircraft, just like with a regular FMS.”
According to Phys.org, navigation systems company Marinvent will soon test the formula in one of their simulators.