Patent ID: 8280626

Claim:
A method of selecting and storing a subset of available meteorological data along a predicted trajectory of an aircraft and relevant to the predicted trajectory for use by a flight management system in the aircraft, the method comprising the steps of: receiving a predicted trajectory of the aircraft and planned waypoints for the predicted trajectory; receiving meteorological information in a region containing the predicted trajectory; filtering from the meteorological information and retaining only the meteorological information relevant to the predicted trajectory; selecting a segment of the predicted trajectory; if the segment is a level segment, determining pseudo-waypoints and level segment meteorological data related to the pseudo-waypoints and to the planned waypoints to create a first subset of meteorological data; if the segment is a non-level segment, determining non-level segment meteorological data from a calculation of fuel costs and time costs based on selected multidimensional wind data to create a second subset of meteorological data; storing in the flight management system one of the first and second subsets as the subset of available meteorological data; and flying the aircraft in a flight profile constructed by the flight management system based on the subset.