"At an East Asian Airport I witnessed a pilot (in a wavering voice) announce to ATC that the auto-ILS would not engage and therefore he may have to declare an emergency. Very worrying! These people really are out there flying as captain."
As I understand it, Art, in very low visibility, a fully operative autoland system will _legally_ allow an aircraft to land in worse conditions than an aircraft would when being flown manually. I guess the principle here is that the autopilot system is taking care of flying the aircraft and the Captain can concentrate on ensuring that the plane is doing it's job properly... and be ready to hit the panic button (aka the Go-Around switch) should things not seem right.
Regards.
Q.