Theory and Practice of Aircraft Performance

CHAPTER 14Aircraft Mission Profile

14.1 Overview

The main objective of this chapter is to establish mission capability: payload‐range for civil aircraft, and combat/training action capability for military aircraft [1–4]. The mission performance is an integrated aircraft performance by adding up the results obtained in each segment of the mission as shown in Chapters 11–13. This chapter is devoted to classroom examples of civil Bizjet and military AJT mission profiles. For civil aircraft it will be sufficient to estimate the integrated performance of the mission payload capability. Military aircraft segments are composed of different combinations of the segments as shown in Table 14.3 (taken from Table 10.1).

Chapter 10 derived the fundamentals of aircraft performance, laying the foundations for estimating performances for all the segments of a mission profile, for example, takeoff, landing, climb, descent and cruise. Chapter 13 derived the equations required for cruise segment computation, with Bizjet and AJT examples. Manoeuvring is also part of aircraft performance, and being transient in nature it is dealt with separately in Chapter 15.

Low drag at higher altitudes offers better fuel economy. In general, the higher the cruise altitude, the better is the fuel economy. Typically, commercial aircraft cruise segments should be at least as long as the distances covered during climb and descent together. A short mission range need not climb very high, while longer ranges will ...