CAT III ILS Landing

[JayAre]

If anyone's still reading this.... I'd like to hear a real airline pilot tell me how likely it may be that "hand flown" landings (or take-offs for that matter) will become a thing of the past. How well do autopilots deal with things like strong cross-winds, for instance. Not trying to turn this into a "pilotless airplane" argument or anything, but just wondering how close computers are to becoming better overall operators of aircraft than humans.

Seems to me like pilots will end up becoming more and more of flight techs than actual pilots who really get to do anything that resembles flying.

thoughts?

I rode up front J/S SWA into BUR one evening down to mins. Captain hand flew it. It was better than the autopilot, I was blown away how smooth and perfect it was..

 

[taseal]

I rode up front J/S SWA into BUR one evening down to mins. Captain hand flew it. It was better than the autopilot, I was blown away how smooth and perfect it was..

ahhh, i remember that....

so you liked how smooth I was eh

 

[DE727UPS]

QX Dash 8's, and I imagine their RJ's, have a HUD (heads up display) that allows for hand flow CatIII's. The UPS 727's had the same equipment. With the HUD, you keep a cursor in a circle by hand flying small adjustments. In the end, you can land with really low mins.

The 757/767 has CatIII autoland. It's all the autopilot and the flight crew monitoring. It's amazing stuff. Hope it never screws up, cause I pretty much trust it.

 

[ERfly]

If anyone's still reading this.... I'd like to hear a real airline pilot tell me how likely it may be that "hand flown" landings (or take-offs for that matter) will become a thing of the past. How well do autopilots deal with things like strong cross-winds, for instance. Not trying to turn this into a "pilotless airplane" argument or anything, but just wondering how close computers are to becoming better overall operators of aircraft than humans.

Seems to me like pilots will end up becoming more and more of flight techs than actual pilots who really get to do anything that resembles flying.

thoughts?

As far as dealing with winds, we have limits for our CAT II operations (we're not CAT III certified, but it's still pretty damn low). I'm not sure what the crosswinds are, but I know we can't have more than a 10 knot tail wind (9 in the XR) and there are headwind limits as well.

It's an in depth briefing and it's a bit tricky the first time you do it. Everything happens so fast the last 500 feet or so. I've done several as an FO (a few right to mins) and one as a Captain. I'd prefer not to do them, but they are cool.

Our autopilot is on for the approach and it's recommended we let it take us to 50 feet.