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Glite Dictionary
🛫 Directing aircraft 🤖 Automatic guidance
flight control

flight control

1 4.2
People on the ground who guide aircraft by radio while they fly
  • noun
  • /flaɪt kənˈtroʊl/
  • Specialized
translation icon : control de vuelo
  • The flight control team monitored the aircraft's altitude and trajectory from the ground station.
  • flight control system
  • flight control computers

Examples

  • Flight 209er, this is Denver flight control.

    Airplane! (1980)

  • Over the years, engines replaced rubber bands, but flight control remained a challenge.

    Academic text (2004)

  • Vacuum tube radio made flight control complicated.

    Academic text (2004)

  • Due to a missing command from the onboard flight control system, the main engine continued to operate until depletion of the remaining fuel.

    Blog text (34)

  • A problem with the onboard flight-control system of the newly built upper stage of the rocket was to blame.

    Blog text (34)

  • Effective flight control ensures that planes can navigate smoothly during takeoff and landing.

  • The communication between the pilots and flight control is crucial for safe aircraft operations.

Synonyms

ground control
vsflight control
4 4.2

A team that talks to pilots and guides planes during landing

directs and manages aircraft movement while airborne rather than only during landing

Surface Forms

flight control singular
flight controls plural

Morphology

flight + control

The phrase 'flight control' is directly compositional: it denotes the control (mechanism or system) of flight, which a learner can infer by combining 'flight' (the act/trajectory of flying) and 'control' (a mechanism for adjusting functions). This follows a common noun+noun composition pattern found cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows both words can reliably deduce the intended system/software meaning.

Etymology

Flight control comes from the people in airport towers and control rooms who use radio to tell pilots where to go and keep planes safe. The word control means giving directions to a flight, so it now means 'directing and managing aircraft in flight'.