Just wondering. I'm flying the NGX on a stormy day into Montreal and it seems like a crosswind landing is necessary. Is the autopilot able to have the aircraft fly in the diagonal direction that is used on crosswinds? 

It can, but only up to a limit.  You haven't specified a specific model, but the autopilot/land can accomadate an approximately 31-35 kt crosswind.

Max crosswind ccmponent: fail passive autopilot =20kt, fail-operational=25kt. Also some regulation rules may restrict your maximum crosswind to 20kt.

In the flight manual I use they have set a limitation of 15 kts for there 737 which are all equipped with fail passive autopilot. Also, they limit the autoland to max headwind of 25kts or a max tailwind of 10kts.

Hi,

Depends also on companies SOPs: i.e. limits reported by Rostyslav are absolute limits  and you never have to overpass them but company Standard Operating Procedures can establish (and often they do) LOWER limits . Certainly with a 20 kts crosswind or also a 15 kts crosswind gusting at 20 and turbulence air I would never use autoland...

 

Ciao

 

Andrea B.

Hi,

Depends also on companies SOPs: i.e. limits reported by Rostyslav are absolute limits  and you never have to overpass them but company Standard Operating Procedures can establish (and often they do) LOWER limits . Certainly with a 20 kts crosswind or also a 15 kts crosswind gusting at 20 and turbulence air I would never use autoland...

 

Ciao

 

Andrea B.

 

Or choose another runway with less crosswind lol.

 

(hard to do with an airport with only one runway of course.)

 

Autoland crosswind limitations are more limiting than manual landing. This is because the autoland will always land on centreline and crabbed. The pilot can be more imaginative such as using rudder/wing low to straighten out in the final moments etc.

 

Autoland also requires an ILS. Not all runways have an ILS installation (They are expensive). Sometimes airports will have a shorter, less used crossing runway that may have less crosswind component, but no ILS. The suggestion would be to use this runway if required to meet your Crosswind component requirements/ratings/limits, even if Autoland won't be available.