NigelOnDraft wrote:-
Your solution(s) are decades away from being technically feasible, let alone financially acceptable.
We are far from any aircraft being able to truly "autoland". Today's aircraft can land without a pilot manipulating the flying controls in the landing phase, but require 100% interaction, monitoring and potential intervention from the crew in the approach and landing phase.
So what is the Boeing Honeywell Uninterruptible Autopilot then?
See
Boeing Honeywell Uninterruptible Autopilot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Boeing Honeywell Uninterruptible Autopilot is a set of sub-routines aimed at defeating attempts at aircraft hijacking by removing electrical power from an aircraft's flight deck, and irrevocably passing pilot authority to the autopilot and navigational computer for an automated landing at a safe airfield that can deal effectively with the incident.
In 2005, avionics supplier, Honeywell, was reported to be talking to both Boeing and Airbus about fitting a device aimed at preventing a 9/11-style hijack. On 16 April 2003, Honeywell filed patent [9] Airbus and BAE Systems, had been working on the project with Honeywell. Development sped up after the September 11, 2001 attacks.[10][11] The patent for the system was awarded to Boeing in 2006
Of course I realise this is an Airbus A320 but normally Airbus is way ahead of Boeing on such matters and it says above that Honeywell was also taking to Airbus about its system.
And even if no regular scheduled Boeing commercial aircraft yet has it on board it seems to be in a state of development where that could happen within 5 years if the political will was there.