Method for displaying a user entered flight path

1. A method for selecting and displaying a flight path for an aircraft on a touch screen display of a flight deck of the aircraft, the method comprising:

receiving a trace input indicative of a physically traced route on the touch screen display of a selected flight path on a map displayed on the touch screen display;

generating a final flight path from the trace input and performance attributes of the aircraft wherein the final flight path can be flown by the aircraft; and

displaying the final flight path on the touch screen display of the flight deck.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising modeling the trace input for analysis and where such analysis is used to generate the final flight path.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein modeling the trace input includes modeling the trace input by generating a series of waypoints from the input.

4. The method of claim 2 wherein modeling the trace input includes modeling the trace input with a curve fit.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein modeling the trace input with a curve fit comprises extracting data points from the curve fit and connecting them with linear segments.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein the data points are waypoints.

7. The method of claim 5 wherein generating the final flight path comprises generating a curve from the data points, with the curve constrained according to the performance attributes of the aircraft.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein generating the final flight path further comprises constraining the curve by at least one of geographic constraints and weather constraints.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the performance attributes of the aircraft, the geographic constraints, and the weather constraints are contained in a database.

10. The method of claim 1 , further comprising adapting the final flight path to create an attainable final flight path.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein the final flight path is adapted based on at least one of weather, terrain, fixed obstacles, variable obstacles, and flight characteristics of the aircraft to create the attainable final flight path.

12. The method of claim 10 wherein displaying the final flight path on the display of the flight deck comprises displaying the attainable final flight path.

13. The method of claim 10 , further comprising creating multiple attainable final flight paths and displaying the multiple attainable final flight paths.

14. The method of claim 13 , further comprising determining a user selection of one of the displayed multiple attainable final flight paths.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein displaying the final flight path on the display of the flight deck comprises displaying the determined user selected attainable flight path.

16. The method of claim 10 wherein the attainable final flight path is curved.

17. The method of claim 10 , further comprising indicating changes between the final flight path and the attainable final flight path.

18. The method claim 17 , further comprising receiving approval of the indicated changes before displaying the attainable flight path.