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Old 8th Sep 2011, 12:36
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WHBM
 
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Originally Posted by REasson
The development of the system for the Caravelle during the 1960s is another story, unknown to me, and I hope there will be contributions on it.
There is some detail of the French Caravelle autoland here in an old Flight magazine

automatic landing | flight systems | marconi mechanical | 1963 | 0036 | Flight Archive

There's probably a bit more to be found digging around other issues.

If I recall correctly the driver of the Caravelle development was the same as the BEA desire, to improve the performance of trunk domestc services in foggy conditions (which seemed much more prevalent in the 1960s than nowadays). The main air route afflicted was Air Inter's Paris to Lyon, which apparently suffered extensively at both ends in the winter, and compared to nowadays had a very large air service, as the TGV rail line which has now taken most of the traffic between these points was something far in the future.
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