Patent ID: 6931248

Claim:
A method of selecting a ground station within an aeronautical telecommunications network including a terrestrial network that can be accessed by a set of ground stations, the method comprising: during preparation of a flight plan for an aircraft, and after determining a route of the aircraft: selecting, from among the ground stations, those ground stations within a range of the route of the aircraft defined by the flight plan, and disregarding ground stations outside of the range of the route of the aircraft defined by the flight plan; establishing a database having, as elements, preference scores associated with identifiers denoting pairs each formed by the selected ground stations and by one or more air-ground communications modes compatible with a ground station in question; establishing a classification as to the elements of the database based, for each element, on a position of the area of coverage of the ground station to which it relates, with respect to the route of the aircraft defined by the flight plan, the classification being manifested by an addressing of the elements of the database as a function of the position of the aircraft along the route defined by its flight plan; and loading the database on board the aircraft for its subsequent use by an on- board decision unit having a function of selecting the ground station chosen for accessing the terrestrial network and the air-ground communications mode or modes used with the chosen ground station; upon execution of the flight plan by a flight-management system equipping the aircraft and periodically giving the position of the aircraft on the route defined by the flight plan: having the decision unit select, from the database loaded on-board the aircraft, one of the pairs or the ground-station air-ground and ground air communications mode pair having the best preference score from among these the identifiers of which features in the database at the address corresponding to the last position of the aircraft communicated by its flight-management system.