Can a plane land automatically?
Modern airliners are indeed, capable of landing under automatic pilot control with ‘a helping hand’ from the flight crew. In such cases, the pilot obtains explicit, advance permission from ground control and with the help of the instrument landing system, the automatic pilot brings the plane to touchdown by following an electromagnetic guidepath beam transmitted by the airport localizer. The tasks of programming the automatic pilot, lowering the landing gear and extending the landing flaps in accordance with traffic and weather conditions are, however, still performed by the cockpit crew. In the vast majority of cases, the pilot switches back to manual control for the final stage of the landing approach.
