Patent ID: 8090531

Claim:
A method for assisting an aircraft to rejoin a flight plan, the flight plan defining a path to be followed by the aircraft so as to link a departure airport AD to a destination airport AA, the flight plan being composed of a number N of segments LEG i , a flight segment LEG i being identified by an index i lying between 1 and N, the index i defining an order of the segment LEG i in the flight plan, the flight segment LEG i being defined by a departure end (waypoint WPT i−1 ) and by an arrival end (WPT i ), WPT 0 corresponding to a geographical departure position AD, WPT N being a geographical arrival position AA, a waypoint WPT i being removed from the flight plan once the aircraft has passed through the waypoint WPT i , in a navigation mode termed “managed mode”, the aircraft steering towards a waypoint whose index is a minimum, the aircraft having momentarily left the managed mode and having deviated from the flight plan after passing through a waypoint WPT p−1 , the aircraft occupying a position PPOS and seeking to rejoin the flight plan so as to follow the flight plan in the managed mode, where p is the index of the waypoint corresponding to an upstream end of a current active LEG, the method comprising: a step of evaluating a separation distance D j =D(PPOS, WPT j ) between the position PPOS of the aircraft and waypoints WPT j for any index j lying between p and N; a step of determining auxiliary indices k lying between p+1 and N−1 for which a separation distance D k =Dist(PPOS, WPT k ) between the position PPOS of the aircraft and a waypoint WPT k is less than D k−1 and than D k+1 ; and a step of determining a rejoining index k NST from among the auxiliary indices k so as to define a LEG kNST , termed potential, on the basis of which a new flight plan is established when the aircraft passes in proximity to the LEG kNST .