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Design Limitations for Runway Operations of Gliding Aircraft

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-22-2025

Abstract

The conceptual design of future high-Mach airframes relies upon constraints imposed by simplified feasibility and performance screening metrics. Reusable aircraft must safely land under all circumstances, including situations with engines inoperative. To identify designs that permit unpowered aircraft to operate in real-world runways, we developed a novel method optimizing kinematic performance, which a designer can use to discover emerging (statistical) relationships to predict landing feasibility. To land under “dead-stick” (unpowered) conditions with a low-L/Dmax aircraft, pilots cannot fly standard stabilized approaches to the threshold. Instead, these aircraft must arrest their sink rate through a dynamic maneuver initiated far in advance of the runway. This parametric study identifies design space regions where unpowered aircraft can land following generalized procedures. We also identify regions of the design space requiring specialized procedures as well as still others that simply cannot perform a safe landing.

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This article was published online in November 2025 ahead of inclusion in an issue of Journal of Aircraft.

Source Publication

Journal of Aircraft (ISSN 0021-8669 | eISSN 1533-3868)

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