Refinements in the lateral and longitudinal guidance for an automatic landing system capable of curved trajectories have been studied. Wing flaps or drag flaps (speed brakes) were found to provide faster and more precise speed control than autothrottles. In the case of the lateral control, it is shown that the use of the integral of the roll error in the roll command over the first 30 to 40 sec¬onds of flight reduces the sensitivity of the lateral guidance to the gain on the azimuth-guidance-angle error in the roll command. Also, changes to the guidance algorithm are given that permit π-radian approaches and constrain the airplane to fly in a specified plane defined by the position of the airplane at the start of letdown and the flare point.
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