Autoland Article at WeatherWise

[pilotjww]

http://www.weather-wise.org/default.htm

Are you current to Autoland?
At which airports have you performed an Autoland?
Which training centers can simulate an Autoland?
Are any of the corporate-type jets capable to Autoland?

Lots of questions, I know, but perhaps an interesting topic for this group.

 

[xdashdriver]

I flew a Piper Saratoga for a few months that had a KFC200 in it. I was flying at a CATIIIb approved airport (read: VERY stable ILS signal). The A/P must have been extremely well calibrated and suited to the aircraft as well, because without fail, you could fly a nicely coupled ILS right down to the ground and land without even so much as a hint of any oscillation from the A/P. Course I only tried it in calm winds, in good VFR conditions for fun, otherwise the result would probably have been very different.

Ray

 

[derg]

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Are you current to Autoland?

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Yup.

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At which airports have you performed an Autoland?

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Lots

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Which training centers can simulate an Autoland?

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I dunno! We can at Delta pretty easily!

Autlands scare the death out of me because the autopilot flies the aircraft differently than a human so more or less you're monitoring about ten different things that have to happen in exact sequence all within the span of 30 seconds, but the last five happen in about 4 seconds and if one thing is out of sequence or isn't correct, it's a missed approach.

The people that believe that airplanes will one day reliably fly themselves without a hitch or pilots are reading too much sci fi!