Uses of a Cloud-Based Flight Management System to Enhance Airspace Efficiency

This paper qualitatively explores a Cloud-based Flight Management System, which is a digital twin of an FMS. The Cloud FMS (CFMS) is a type of digital twin that is hosted on a cloud computing environment. Because the CFMS has access to the state of the aircraft on which the FMS is running, it contains a wealth of information not normally available to ground-based aviation systems. In addition, the CFMS can access large amounts of compute power that is unavailable to the flight-deck based FMS. Therefore, the CMFS is in a unique position to compute quantities that were impractical in the past. This paper begins by discussing the CFMS concept some use cases. It ends by discussing additional quantities—such as wake vortex and noise footprints—that can be computed by the CFMS and may lead to enhanced NAS efficiency.