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Not for decades now. Sure, a basic private aircraft wing-leveler or heading keeping system will fly you into a mountain, but the autopilots in passenger airlin
by falcolas 6y ago
Not for decades now.
Sure, a basic private aircraft wing-leveler or heading keeping system will fly you into a mountain, but the autopilots in passenger airlines can take off, fly a complete course, and land the plane.
They're monitored by trained professionals with thousands of paid hours and hundreds of hours of training, of course.
- VBprogrammer 6y agoThat is precisely the misconception I was talking about. It's simply not true for modern airliners (outside of a few technical demonstrations). There was a Global businesses jet which had auto-takeoff but that's about the only one I know of in service. The reason it's not used is there are no limits on required takeoff visibility so there is no operational capibilities to be gained by auto-takeoff and you need to be able to see enough to taxi to the runway in any case. CAT-III autoland is a thing but it's actually only used in very limited circumstances, not least because it increases runway safety margins in a way which restricts runway utilisation. Many busy international airfields don't even have a CAT-III certified runway. The aircraft won't automatically cycle through to the correct mode to land (there are a bunch of other steps required to put then autopilot into a double/triple redundant mode etc).