I think it's more a symptom of how out of touch people are with the age of many of the things we think of as "advanced" tech. The first aircraft autopilot syste

I think it's more a symptom of how out of touch people are with the age of many of the things we think of as "advanced" tech. The first aircraft autopilot system was developed in 1912; instrument landings have been around since the 1920s; and fully operational autoland predates the TriStar by almost a decade. Granted, early instrument landing systems weren't as precise or as convenient as their modern-day equivalents, but you can implement basic ILS with a few carefully-placed radio antennas (and in fact that's how it was done back in the day), and the modern systems work on exactly the same principles.