the first autoland system was fitted on the hawker siddeley trident in 1962, but it was built to deal with inclement weather where the runway was completely invisible from the cockpit.
the lockheed L-1011 from 1970 could perform an entire flight on autopilot, including takeoff and landing.
i’ve not heard of a system that kicks in when there’s an emergency though.
The Lockheed L-1011 cannot recognize that the pilot is incapacitated. It cannot make a decision on which airport is the most appropriate for an emergency landing. It cannot automatically communicate with air traffic control to declare an emergency and to determine if it can actually land on the chosen airport. It cannot configure the plane for landing. It cannot automatically power-down the plane after landing.
So yes, it can do all the parts except the relevant new parts of Garmin Autoland.
The system literally took control away from both perfectly healthy pilots and would not return it to them. This was not the technological success some folks are making it out to be. The landing was fine, but for the pilots to not be able to reclaim control of the craft is a fucking atrocity.
pilots had “made the decision to leave the system engaged,” and “automatically engaged exactly as designed when the cabin altitude exceeded the prescribed safe levels.”
ILS autoland is something that’s super common. Pretty much every jetliner and most commercial planes are equipped with them. What they can do is land a plane automatically.
Garmin Autoland does that too, but it does a lot of other things too.
It figures out that the pilot has been incapacitated (or is activated manually by the pilot)
It determines which of the nearby airports is best suited for the landing and makes the decision which airport to take
It automatically communicates with air traffic control to make sure it can actually land on that airport. It also automatically declares an emergency
It configures the autopilot to head to the airport
It configures the plane for landing
It performs an ILS landing
It then shuts off the engines to allow emergency personell safe access
Equating this system with ILS autoland is like equating Level 5 self-driving cars with an automatic parking system. Yes, both systems perform an automatic parking at the end of the journey, but the Level 5 self-driving car does a ton more too.
the first autoland system was fitted on the hawker siddeley trident in 1962, but it was built to deal with inclement weather where the runway was completely invisible from the cockpit.
the lockheed L-1011 from 1970 could perform an entire flight on autopilot, including takeoff and landing.
i’ve not heard of a system that kicks in when there’s an emergency though.
The Lockheed L-1011 cannot recognize that the pilot is incapacitated. It cannot make a decision on which airport is the most appropriate for an emergency landing. It cannot automatically communicate with air traffic control to declare an emergency and to determine if it can actually land on the chosen airport. It cannot configure the plane for landing. It cannot automatically power-down the plane after landing.
So yes, it can do all the parts except the relevant new parts of Garmin Autoland.
https://www.hondajet.com/en/News/Emergency-Auto-Land
Interesting, why wasn’t this commercialized in a wider way?
I thought that the landing/take-off phase was the difficult one to automate?
Would these systems work in airport like Bhutan’s Paro Airport ?
The system literally took control away from both perfectly healthy pilots and would not return it to them. This was not the technological success some folks are making it out to be. The landing was fine, but for the pilots to not be able to reclaim control of the craft is a fucking atrocity.
i think it’s standard equipment today. it all works with radio beacons so any place that has them should enable autolanding.
You are mixing up things.
ILS autoland is something that’s super common. Pretty much every jetliner and most commercial planes are equipped with them. What they can do is land a plane automatically.
Garmin Autoland does that too, but it does a lot of other things too.
Equating this system with ILS autoland is like equating Level 5 self-driving cars with an automatic parking system. Yes, both systems perform an automatic parking at the end of the journey, but the Level 5 self-driving car does a ton more too.