Airborne geophysical survey of the territory is performed by flying an aircraft along the trajectories covering the studied area of the surface. Naturally, the quality of manual piloting is subject to increased requirements. At the same time, a flight with terrain tracking and in the presence of wind disturbances is a difficult task for the pilot. The paper suggests informing the pilot about deviation from the specified trajectory and indicating in the field of view the director index for thrust control. The task of the pilot is to bring the index to zero by manipulating the power lever and thereby zeroing the piloting error. The solution of the task is achieved by using an original energy approach. The mathematical formulation of the approach is the energy balance equation. A variant of the structure of the energy control system and a prototype of a navigation indicator with a director index is proposed. The results of flights along the route using the director index are presented in the form of graphs and numerical estimates.