Autoland availability, USA and Canada
Wondering how many airports in North America are Cat 3b enabled on one or more runways, and would activate and authorise
random full autoland activity other than in reduced vis and/or less than Cat 1 ILS conditions? I'm not including practice
autoland requests in good weather where separation and aerial protection procedures don't interfere with normal ops at busy times.
Have been following the SFO incident thread with interest, and can't help noticing that a significant number of posts seem to assume that
'Autoland' is enabled by aircraft equipment only, and might therefore be a simple solution where 'Human Factors' might be below spec?. One person, who otherwise appeared well informed, even claiming to know that "Some airlines insist on use of autoland". ( not sure how for practical reasons that would figure in the MEL,
and I suspect that many won't have appreciated just how much the extra maintenance costing for Cat 2 and 3 flight and ground equipment is )
( Although I'm familiar with Cat 3b ( last two years of DC10 + 747, 100, 200, and 400 ) I swapped away from all that good stuff back to Cat 1 in 1998, and so am genuinely way out of date. On my last aircraft, the cost of reinstatement to Cat 2 would have out-stripped the aircraft's value! )