Definition
The control panel on a flight director system used by the pilot to select which guidance mode the system will follow, such as heading, navigation, approach, or altitude hold. The mode selector tells the flight director what kind of flight path to compute and display on the command bars of the attitude indicator.
Plain English
It is the panel of buttons or switches the pilot uses to tell the flight director what to do — for example, follow a heading, track a navigation course, or capture an altitude.
Context Anchor
Seen on the flight director or autopilot control panel when setting up instrument guidance before or during flight.
Derivation
‘Mode’ comes from the Latin modus, meaning ‘a way or manner of doing something.’ In aviation, a mode is a specific way the flight director is set to fly the airplane. The selector is the control used to pick that way.
Why Pilots Care
Allows the pilot to command precise autopilot behavior without constant manual control, lowering workload during instrument flight.
Intuition Check
Do not assume a mode selector flies the airplane by itself. It selects what kind of guidance the system displays; the pilot or autopilot still has to act on that guidance.
Example Sentence 1
After being cleared direct to the next waypoint, the pilot used the mode selector to switch the flight director from heading mode to navigation mode.
Example Sentence 2
During the approach, the mode selector was switched to approach mode to capture both the localizer and glideslope.