Auto Landings

I did say in my last post that I'd discuss Auto Landings in another thread so here it is.

Most large modern jets have the ability to 'Auto Land'. A few of these planes are the : Boeing 747, 757, 767, 777, 787 (not yet in service) some 737s; the Airbus 318, 319, 320, 321, 330, 340 and 380. There are others planes that can auto land, but that list covers most of what you'd see as a passenger these days. Another thing to note is that not only does the plane have to be capable, the pilots and the airline have to be signed off to do auto landings.

Auto Landing by definition is the autopilot landing the airplane without pilot intervention. The reason this ability is necessary is to allow a landing in very low visibility at the destination airport, all the way down to zero visibility.

All normal landings are couducted by the pilot and are done visually even in low visibility. I landed in D.C. the other day with low overcast skys and didn't see the runway until 700 feet above the ground.

When the visibility drops below the minimum allowed altitude for that runway, which is usually 2000 feet or as determined by the FAA, a visual landing is no longer deemed safe. This means that we will conduct an auto landing.

How it works:

We first will get a weather report and if the visibility is reported near or below the minimum allowed for a normal visual or a low visibility visual landing, we'll set up an auto landing.

We have to ensure that everything that is required to fly the apporach and land is in working order. That includes, both autopilots, our GPS systems, our glass cockpit displays, radios, instrument landing system indications and a few more items.

If that is all working we proceed with a long briefing about what we are specifically going to do on the approach and landing and what we will do if something breaks or goes wrong. We then fly the apporach to landing. During the arrpoach, we have only our instruments to tell us where we are until we either see the runway lights or we feel the wheels touch down. Because of this, we are extra vigilant about our positiion and altitude. We will each monitor certian items and will 'call out' anything that has failed or doesn't look right.

At 100 feet above the ground, I will call "ALERT" and if everything is still where it should be, we continue and let the plane land itself. The only intervention by the pilot is pulling the thrust back to idle and then to reverse after touchdown, even the brakes are automatic.

Whew! We're down and slowed to about 60 mph on the runway. Now we turn off the auto pilot and drive or taxi the plane toward the gate to let everyone get on their way. If the visibility is really low, we have to follow lights in the ground matched to our charts to see where we are going. In reality, we may fly in, land and park at the gate never seeing any farther than 100 feet ahead.

Hopefully, this answers a few of those questions about what's really going on up front.