A Navy jet like a F/A-18F Super Hornet can fly a "coupled approach" in gusty winds, onto a pitching deck and still put the tailhook onto the #3 arresting cable

A Navy jet like a F/A-18F Super Hornet can fly a "coupled approach" in gusty winds, onto a pitching deck and still put the tailhook onto the #3 arresting cable accurately. Navy F/A-18s can fly with terrain following radar to avoid hazards. Auto-pilot with "Terrain Aviodance" mode is related to the Terrain Awareness and Warning System (TAWS) [1] Auto-Throttle on a commercial airliner like a 777 can correct for deviations caused by gusts and other weather conditions. Careful parsing of METAR[2] information can guide jets away from weather fairly easily. Airline pilots manually set the autopilot to weather hazards but this could be done automatically in the near future. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrain_awareness_and_warning_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrain_awareness_and_warning_s... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/METAR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/METAR