Abstract: In th 4D flight management system design, it is quite important to ensure an exact arrival time to a metering fix in the terminal area. In order to do so, first of all, a suitable speed profile for the aircraft dealt with has to be established. In such a speed profile, for every interval of flight path, exists a range of speed compatible with the aircraft. Once the arrival time requirement is given in the time interval of the maximum and minimum arrival time calculated by the lower bound and upper bound of the speed profile respectively, then with the aid of the proposed algorithm of iteration computation, an optimal speed proifle can be easily found in a few iterations. The work done in the paper is a necessary step for the design of 4D flight management system.

Key words: four dimensional guidance, speed profile, flight management system