Question for those who are familiar with real-world procedures: I know that for many obvious reasons pilots prefer to hand fly approaches, but I was wondering today if a pilot can choose to do an autoland (assuming the plane and crew are rated appropriately) just because they want to? Also are there any airlines out there that use autoland more frequently? I was watching the JustPlanes Air Canada 777 video earlier and it seems like either they use autoland as their default or that one Captain just really liked to autoland.

Not just the plane and the crew, but also the runway has to be capable of doing it. Also, if I remember correctly, the autoland has to be checked every so often, I think 45 days, but I could be wrong.

 Autolands are used in the real world pretty much only when necessary due to low visibility (what simmers often call low vis is generally not even close) or to maintain pilot proficiency. ILS protected areas are not protected to CAT II or III standards during normal operations and as such the ILS integrity cannot be ensured for autolands in most conditions. There's A LOT more involved than a regular Cat I.

Provided the runway is approved you can shoot an auto land at your leisure, always good practice to mention it to ATC though, they won’t  offer LVO protection but will still look out for you.

quite often get company notams requesting if diverting into “xxxx” please carry out auto land and evaluate, that way the runway can be approved for fleet auto land operations if required.

 

I was riding an L1011 into JFK on TWA.  After we landed the pilot said it was their first Autoland.  Made an Autoland program for MSFS that worked very well, I even coded it to work on prop aircraft.  I put in a partial AI that could calculate the best approach speed for the aircraft type being flown.  It used approach mode, once captured it used the throttle to maintain the optimum glidepath, then would cut the throttle at minimums for the landing and auto flare.

John

Edited April 15, 20188 yr by John_Cillis