Originally Posted by
HalinTexas
SWA hand flies the Cat II&III because of the HUD and no ATs.
No, they hand fly the Cat 2/3 approaches because it’s cheaper. If you don’t bother to buy ATs for your aircraft and don’t want to maintain autopilot systems to allow autoland, a hand flown approach with the HUD is your only option.
Not an area to go cheap, IMO. It may be a piece of cake most of the time but it’s still hand flying which leaves room for error. As a pax, I think I’d rather have an autoland than hope the pilot has brought his A-game that day.
Originally Posted by
Scoop
It is a very sweet system.
Sounds like it is a sweet system. It would be a nice backup to a normal autoland system in the event the aircraft was not in Cat-2 or 3 status.
It would seems like it’s best suited for smaller aircraft. If you have a 50’ DH, it’s likely that the cockpit of large widebodies would still be in the soup if it’s a 600/600/600 approach at mins.