Atmospheric turbulence and aircraft height-keeping accuracy

Abstract

As a contribution to the study of vertical separation standards for use in air traffic control, an examination is made of the possiblllty of applying the spectral methods already used in gust load evaluations to the problem of determining the height-keeping errors caused by atmospheric turbulence. Although it is found that the data available on the low frequency components of atmospheric turbulence and on the nature of the control applied by the pilot, whether human or automatic, are not sufficient to allow an accurate estimation of these errors, it is concluded that they do not make a significant contribution to the total errors experienced. It is noted, however, that certain atmospheric phenomena lie outside the scope of the theory used here.