Abstract: An aircraft flight management system having a flight management computer that stores a pre-planned lateral route of flight of the aircraft comprising a plurality of successive waypoints to be overflown, the next proximate waypoint being an active waypoint, a method providing a return-to-path maneuver in the event that the aircraft deviates from the pre-planned route, including selecting a new active waypoint, calculating a return-to-path route to overfly the new active waypoint, and selectably accepting the calculated return-to-path route.

Abstract: A path capture forcing function generator utilizes integrations from an initial altitude rate error signal and an initial altitude error signal to provide an altitude rate signal and an altitude signal which are compared to the altitude rate error and altitude error signals to provide path rate error and path error signals to the autopilot. In the process of providing the altitude rate and altitude error signals an altitude acceleration signal is established which is used as a feed forward predictor for expected normal acceleration of the aircraft.