3 ms·

While your last sentence may be true-ish (I'm not really qualified to answer with authority), your first sentence is very much not. This relevant link gets pos

• cbr 14y ago
  Your link doesn't argue with Cowen's first sentence. When Cowen says "essentially pilotless" I understand it to mean "keeps going without operator intervention", and after reading your link that's still my understanding of what happens.
  • davidmr 14y ago
    I'm not sure you and I read it in the same way: And what do terms like “automatic” and “autopilot” mean, anyway? Autopilot is simply a tool, along with many other tools available to the crew. You still need to tell it what to do, how to do it and when to do it. And although it frees the pilot from having to have his or her hands physically on the control wheel (or sidestick) or thrust levers, this is only a fraction of what the act of “flying” entails. The autopilot is not flying the plane. The crew is flying the plane, through the autoflight system. That in no way says "keeps going without operator intervention" to me.