Yes, Glum is probably in the VC10th century, where very much manpower was(is?) required. There's possibly a shortage of good quality Radar Valves too.
I worked for (several) airlines up to 767 and I can't remember ever having an autoland defect that required anything but a short time to fix/replace, even after a downgrade.
As already pointed out - newer aircraft don't have those manpower intensive problems and some can transmit their data downloads on demand.