Smudger:
I am a Cat 3b qualified 757 Captain and as such have been disappointed at the level of ignorance and speculation displayed on this thread. Those who aren't aware of lo-vis operations and the technicalities involved are perfectly entitled to ask us professionals about the intricacies of such operations.. but please... don't accuse aircrew of being "cowboys" and such until the facts are known.. rant over
There is not one mindset in the ranks of professional who conduct special-authorization low-visibility approach and landing operations.
I was flying the line when the FAA first came up with the idea of Category II operations. I was also on ALPA's All Weather Flying Committee at the time. Our committee had a whole lot of combined experienced and we all agreed that the early CAT II program was permissive, unsafe, and poorly conceived.
My airline, TWA, became a complete CAT II fleet with the 707 and 727s, with their lousy autopilots and a marginal A/T that worked only on approach. And, the FAA granted an exemption from radar altimeters with an absurd concept of a more carefully calibrated baro altimeter (the so called "yellow dot" altimeter). Eventually, TWA was forced into installing radar altimeters to stay in the program.
Because those autopilots were so bad, the crews were given the option to hand-fly CAT II approaches with A/T and FD. It was not a good program. (American Airlines crashed a 727 at ORD not too many years ago using the same arcane equipment).
Then, came along the L-1011 with its robust fail-active autoland system. Although all that sophistication was intended for CAT III with the Alert Height concept
it finally provided a platform that made CAT II safe.
I flew the 727 for much of my career and refused to make any CAT II approach based on my work on the All Weather Flying Committee.
I briefly flew F/O on the L-1011 in 1974, so I learned first hand the difference that fail-active autoland made. I then went back to the 727 as captain for 10 more years, with more disdain for its CAT II system.
In 1984 I progressed to the B767 and found the autoflight to be as good, but not better, than the pioneering L1011. I flew a few actual CAT II approaches in the 767 using autoland and felt good about it. It permitted me to make the legally required visual assessment that was not possible in the 727 (or 707) if, in fact, the weather was RVR 1200.
I concluded my career on the L-1011, where I made several CAT IIIb actual approaches, seeing nothing until the nose began lowering to the runway. I did wonder about the errant fuel truck lost in the fog.
During the 1970s the ALPA All-Weather Committee strongly lobbied the FAA to require HUD for CAT II. We were shown the door. the intervening years have shown the value of HUD as an option to fail-operational autoland to make CAT II safe. In fact, the FAA has long since embraced HUD as a vehicle to safe CAT II operations.
One expert's view.