Patent ID: 7206674

Claim:
A method for displaying information for one or more aircraft flights, the method comprising: for at least one continuously time varying parameter associated with at least one flight phase of each of M aircraft, numbered m=1, . . . , M (M≧2), providing a polynomial approximation P(t;m) for the parameter as a polynomial of degree D in a time variable t in a selected time interval for the selected flight phase, where D is at mosr equal to 2; expressing the polynomial P(t;m) as p0(m)+p1(m) (t−t0)+p2(m) (t−t0) 2 +error(m), where p0(m), p1(m), p2(m) and error(m) are coefficients associated with the flight phase and with aircraft number m and error(m) is minimized by choice of the coefficients p0(m), p1(m) and p2(m); for each set of coefficient values {p1(m),pk2(m),pk3(m)), error(m)} m , determining a mean value p(k;1), a variance p(k;2), a minimum value and a maximum value for each of the sets of coefficient values; for each of the M aircraft flights, providing a list of flights that manifest atypical behavior according to one or more specified atypicality criteria, from a comparison with a set of one or more reference values of at least one of the mean, variance, minimum value and maximum value for at least one of the sets of coefficient values; for at least one atypical phase of the at least one flight in the collection, displaying, in at least one of graphical format and alphanumeric format, variation, with at least one of time or distance traveled, of a selected flight parameter (referred to as an “atypical phase flight parameter”) that contributed to the atypical phase for the at least one flight, and displaying, on the same screen, variation of a selected group of flight parameter values, corresponding to the selected atypical phase flight parameter, for flights that were not atypical during the atypical phase; and graphically displaying variation, with at least one of time and distance traveled, of a flight parameter trace for each of one or more atypical phase flight parameters.