Message posted by BoomerFrom47 on July 19, 2015 at 13:24:27 PST:

L-1011's had autoland starting in 1976. Delta and British Airways used it. However, the ILS at the airport had to be certified to CAT IIIc, which required calibration and checking so often that it was very expensive. Delta agreed to pay for certification at Atlanta and LAX, but would only allow their own planes to use it. As a result, in the late 70s and 80s, Delta was the only airline flying to those fields when the weather was below everyone else's minimums.

Soon after that, DC-10s got it. A friend of mine was chief engineer on flight testing the DC-10 system. Now, most large planes have the capability. Of course, if pilots always used it, they would lose proficiency at landing!

No civilian planes have an autotakeoff capability. Of course, some large UAVs do.

In Reply to: Re: LRS-B & RQ-180 posted by gordy on July 10, 2015 at 14:52:51 PST:

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