In fact, it's pretty routine. Don't have the source at hand, but somewhere around 1% of all landings (at airports with ILS) are autolands.

I think it was Boeing that even requires at least 1 autoland per plane every 30 days or so.

You can find videos of this on YouTube. Completely hands-off.

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themafia 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Most carriers have a rule that on clear days you always hand fly the landing.

This is a competence you do not want to lose.

It's also the case that you can have a whole approach setup in your flight computer and at the last minute the controller gives you a runway change. You could drop your head down and start typing a bunch info the FMC but you're generally better off just disabling auto pilot and manually making the adjustment.

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amelius 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm curious, what is harder to implement: autoland for airplanes, or autoland for rockets (spaceX)?

	▲	ckastner 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I don't know if these are comparable. But two interesting data points from the Wikipedia article I linked are that the first aircraft certification for ILS Cat III was in 1968, and Cat IIIB in 1975. And IIRC by the 1980s, autoland was already a pretty common feature.