How does pilot know the direction

Another job of ATC is to help airplanes transition from the cruise phase of flight to landing. Pilots have everything they need on charts and the FMC to do this on their own; but around big cities, there are too many airplanes speeding toward the airport at the same time. To safely separate and space the airplanes to land on the runway, controllers will watch all the planes on their radar display and instruct pilots to change their speed and direction, guiding them with voice instructions onto final approach.

Once we land, a similar process happens on the ground while taxiing to the gate. A ground controller in the tower watches the busy taxiways and acts as a traffic cop to keep things moving in an orderly fashion.

However, you now know more about airplane navigation than most of the folks at your next cocktail party. Have you ever heard aircraft radio communication?

In Stuff Pilots Say! I love it but sir I love to fly one,one day and I did business in high school and I heard you need to have knowledge in maths and physics which I dont so how can I must I out a stop to my dreams. Hi Aoam, To fly, you need only general knowledge of math and physics. Basic algebra. If you really want to fly, you can learn what you need to know!

And a good memory. Was quite a job, and when you missed your clearance, you had to refigure a new plan on the fly. When that happened, you were worth your weight in gold. I frequently wished for a computer to make all the work easier, and more accurate.

Of course when those machines finally arrived, I was out of a job. Still, it was quite a challenge. Thanks for the great comments. What aircraft did you navigate on? Sextant and DR [dead reckoning]. Actually, everything was an aid to DR. A real navigation experience was flying solely across the Pacific using pressure patterns and a weather chart.

No other aids. Helped doing it at low latitudes, as the drift changes were small there. No fixes for seven hours. Used Grid techniques the first time, as the mag compasses were nearly useless. PIA, but quickly discovered that using True North as a reference was just as good, especially for the pilots as the heading numbers they saw on their instruments more closely matched what they were used to seeing using magnetic headings.

Strictly a comfort thing. Had to have a steady compass, though. Low precessions, and stable needles. We had the N-1 Compass. A really good reliable instrument. Especially in the round dial era. I liked using DR. Always knew where you were. Never got confused by malfunctioning fancy equipment. Most of the popular routes via waypoints will have a dedicated Airway between them. These directional commands given by ATC are known as Vectors.

Vectors are used to get aircraft lined up for landing at all busy airports. When planes are coming in from all directions, the ATC controllers will funnel all the aircraft to one waypoint many miles out from the airport and then have them all lined up for landing.

Just like all life skills, every pilot must first learn the most basic techniques of air navigation before they move onto the advanced, modern day forms. The main reason behind this is if a pilot was to lose all electrical power, along with their navigation displays they can pull out a map and get plotting a path to their destination. This is mainly for the general aviation pilot who is out flying around for fun and recreation in simple aircraft. The redundant systems in most airliners and commercial aircraft make losing all navigation equipment pretty much non-existent!

When every pilot first begins learning to fly these are the navigation fundamentals they must first master:. Any pilot who is flying a small aircraft under VFR Visual Flight Rules — Has to see the ground at all times and is not familiar with an area will need to look at a map to begin understanding where places are in relation to one another. When flying around, pilots need to develop the skill to be able to look out of their windows and reference landmarks on the ground to their placement on the chart.

This is a very useful way to ensure they are on their planned route and passing that landmark at the specified time. This is known as Pilotage. Although not used by most pilots outside of the training environment, having a chart of the area and drawn route the pilot wishes to fly close to hand is always a good idea.

To this day I still have a chart next to my seat and being in a helicopter it makes it easy to set down on a hill or mountain and formulate a plan if I were to lose my GPS data and I was in unfamiliar territory. The chart is the first point of reference a pilot should use when building a route of their next flight — That building of a route is called the Flight Plan. It is easy for a pilot to use this technique when there are highly visible and identifiable landmarks like mountains, stadiums, monuments, etc but it becomes a little more difficult when the pilot starts to get into the rural parts of the country.

It takes some practice to be able to identify lakes, railroads, and hills when that is all you see. The trick is to look for things that stand out like where roads or rail lines cross a river, or when powerlines take a turn. Odd shaped lakes next to hills or mountains etc. A trick that I find useful is once you are aware of your position on the chart, put your finger there, and turn the chart so it faces the way you are flying.

If the next thing coming up on your map is a road crossing a river, you should be able to see it out of the window. Pilotage takes practice and from time to time all pilots should get the sectional out, turn off their GPS, and practice this technique! Once the aircraft is in flight and the flight plan is being flown, the pilot must begin to start timing their legs and flying their planned headings.

If the flight planning stage was accurate the pilot should be seeing and crossing their chosen landmarks at the times noted on the flight plan. With the use of good Pilotage skills, the pilot can ensure the route being actually flown is matching the route that was planned on the chart and is progressing as it should.

If it is taking longer than planned to reach the planned landmarks, fuel or daylight could become a problem, especially if the flight is a long cross-country trip!

Having spent a good amount of time planning the flight, it is no good if the aircraft is not flown according to what was planned. Each leg will have been planned for the aircraft to fly at a set speed, on a set heading for a set time and a set altitude.

If just one of those parameters is off then a pilot can quickly become unsure of their position. It takes great skill and self-discipline to fly at set parameters!. I find as pilots get further into their experience these basic fundamentals of flying become forgotten and pilots seem to get lazy and fly as they wish!

When the aircraft starts to wander from those parameters then more work is required by the pilot to get back to where they are supposed to be and the longer they leave the correction, the further off course or plan they will be!

For most pilots, being off course by a few degrees or behind schedule a few minutes is acceptable, but if a pilot becomes unsure of their position it is easy for an aircraft to wander into restricted or busy airspace which could result in not only getting yelled at by ATC but could end up with the pilot being fined or prosecuted!

Forecasted weather is just the weather readers best guess and sometimes they get it slightly off. It is hard to judge exact metrics like wind speed and direction, yet both of those can have a very dramatic effect on how an aircraft flies. When a pilot starts to see large differences between the planned landmark crossing times and the actual crossing times, the mental math has to begin. The technique included identifying landmarks that include rivers, cities, mountains, towers and lakes and compare them to printed charts.

At night, the pilots can use highways, airports and city lights to navigate. Pilotage is a simple technique to navigate. But it is not an efficient navigating technique. Pilotage is limited by weather condition when aircraft is on the ground, and the pilot vision is limited.

Dead reckoning is a process to determine the distance between checkpoints and the aircraft location by calculating time and distance base on a specific speed. A more efficient way to determine your position and maintain a scheduled route is by using pilotage and dead reckoning together.

Non-Directional Beacon is ground-based low-frequency radio beacon transmitter. It is used as an instrumental approach for offshore platforms and airports. The ADF deciphers the signal and tells the pilot the location of the beacons and his or her location relative to the beacons. VOR is a short-range navigation system used by aircraft. VOR enables aircraft to determine its location or position and allows the aircraft to stay on the current course of the signals being transmitted by fixed radio beacons on the ground.

The pilot can view the aircraft position relative to the beacons from the ground station. There are two signals emitted from the VOR station. One signal is a rotating signal, and the other signal emits simultaneously omnidirectional which means all directions. The signals are measured, and the phases difference determine radial or line position from the VOR station. The positioning are between degrees. The positions are at degrees South, 90 degrees is East, degrees West, degrees is North. With the positioning and the measuring equipment, the precise position can be determined to a certain VOR ground station.