Method of protecting an aircraft by signalling against the risks of collision with the terrain in procedures with reduced protection corridor

1. A method of protecting an aircraft by automatically signaling against risks of collision with a terrain in a constrained environment when the aircraft follows a procedure with reduced protection corridor,

said procedure defining a published trajectory to be followed by the aircraft along a predefined path located inside said reduced protection corridor, said published trajectory corresponding to an absolute geographical trajectory being published by authorized authorities and stored in an onboard database in the aircraft,

said aircraft comprising an onboard Terrain Awareness and Warning System (TAWS) comprising a caution clearance sensor, said caution clearance sensor being a virtual surface calculated by an onboard computer delimiting an exploration volume of space in front of the aircraft that is compared to the topography of a corresponding terrain as supplied by an onboard terrain database, said caution clearance sensor having an origin corresponding to an extrapolated position of the aircraft few seconds to few tens of seconds ahead of a current position of the aircraft,

said method comprising:

adjusting via a computer position and orientation characteristics of said caution clearance sensor with respect to said published trajectory in order to match said reduced protection corridor,

said position adjusting comprising relocating said origin of said caution clearance sensor at a new predicted position corresponding to an extrapolated position of the aircraft assuming the aircraft is following the published trajectory, said origin being thus situated inside limits of said reduced protection corridor,

said orientation adjusting comprising orienting said caution clearance sensor to match said reduced protection corridor orientation taken at the relocated position,

wherein

if an estimated position of the aircraft presents a lateral deviation less than a first threshold relative to a prescribed trajectory, the position and orientation characteristics of the caution clearance sensor are adjusted so as to take into account direction characteristics of the published trajectory,

if the estimated position of the aircraft presents a lateral deviation greater than a second threshold relative to the prescribed trajectory, the position and orientation characteristics of the caution clearance sensor continue to be determined by the TAWS operating conventionally, and

if the estimated position of the aircraft presents a lateral deviation between the first and second thresholds relative to the prescribed trajectory, the position and orientation characteristics of the caution clearance sensor result from a combination between the adjustment as performed below the first threshold and the determination by the TAWS operating conventionally above the second threshold.

2. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the caution clearance sensor has at least one characteristic chosen from opening, length, width, and gradient.

3. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the caution clearance sensor is that of the TAWS whose characteristics are adjusted locally.

4. The method according to claim 3 , wherein the local adjustment is performed for a given geographic area, a given aircraft speed, or a given heading of the aircraft.

5. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the first threshold is approximately 1 Required Navigation Performance (RNP) and the second threshold is approximately 2 RNP.

6. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising determining entry into and staying in a procedure with reduced protection corridor of the TAWS by correlation between a position of the aircraft and the published trajectory predefined in the onboard database and by calculating a probability of staying in the procedure with reduced protection corridor, while taking into account one or more of the following parameters: a dynamic range of the aircraft, the position of the aircraft, a horizontal speed of the aircraft, a vertical speed of the aircraft, an instantaneous route relative to the RNP trajectory predefined in the onboard database.

7. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising generating a specific warning by the TAWS when, in the procedure with reduced protection corridor, the TAWS determines, under a prescribed altitude of the published trajectory, a distance between a profile of the at least one clearance sensor and a profile of the terrain being flown over that is less than a predetermined threshold.

8. The method according to claim 7 , wherein the specific warning is a recover altitude warning that is generated when an altitude of the aircraft is lower than the prescribed altitude of the published trajectory.