Mode Behavior

“you have to keep in the

back of your head that if

you’re in a managed descent,

the airplane’s going to go

ahead and go down whatever

computed // uh // the vertical

path has computed? and it-and

it’s also gonna m-uh maintain

that that descent airspeed you

have.”

This must be remembered -

other airplanes are not like this.

DES is a pitch to path mode.

Therefore, speed should be on thrust.

But observed thrust FMA is “IDLE”

which suggests speed on pitch. In addition,

ordinary airplanes descend with thrust at

idle and use pitch to control speed.

Interview Data

Concepts