Trident Autoland.

[forget]

I saw the following on another web site

http://www.airliners.net/discussions/tech_ops/read.main/128115/

Is this right, I thought BEA’s Tridents were the first - well before ’69.

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On 9 January 1969, a Caravelle of AIR INTER became the first aircraft in the history of civil aviation to land in actual CAT IIIa conditions during a commercial flight (Lyon-Paris). The operational approval was obtained from the SGAC (France) only two months before in November 1968. This approval was the direct result of successful flight tests made since 1963 during which automatic landing systems were tested (5 March 1963 at Toulouse: first automatic landing without visibility). Fail-operational automatic landing was first used for these types of operations, but it was found useful to develop fail-passive capability in order to satisfy airline requirements for dispatch and operational flexibility.

[Engineer]

Trident was used for the development of Autoland and the Smith industries system obtained approval from the UKCAA in 1972.

It is the same system that is fitted to the Shorts Belfast.

[JW411]

Belfast XR364 made its first autoland at Bedford on 07 June 1966. The aircraft went on to make over 800 autolands to prove the system for use in the Trident.

[forget]

Answering my own question here. Trident - first civil aircraft with Autoland? Seems not. Below from FS web.

Trident G-ARPB carried out the first Cat 3B landing at Heathrow (28L) on 4th Nov 1966. At this time, she had done some 1500 auto-flare landings and many of her operating systems were already ARB approved (Cat 1). The Trident 1's were cleared for duplex Cat 2 auto approaches in 1968 with full Cat 2 Autoland approval on 7th Feb 1968. Triplex Cat 2 Autoland were cleared in Sept 1968. However, full Cat 3A ops were not approved until May 72 with Cat 3B following in 1975.
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The Caravelle had its first autoland test ( although in Cat 2 ), in 1962 and the first autoland in the US in 1964, and was certified to this standard in September 1964. First passenger airline to be authorized to do Cat 2 auto landings was Alitalia, in spring 1966. Cat 3 certification came in early 1967 and by that date, the Caravelle already executed 10.000 automatic approaches with 3500 that included automatic touchdowns as well.

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United used autoland with Caravelle in 1964 already and Aerospatiale did the first successful tests in 1962, but these flights were probably unscheduled ones. However, some things are quite certain: certification dates. According to this paper from Hawker, The Trident was certified for Cat 2 in Sept. 1968, and BEA was authorized to use it in Feb. 1969, comparing to the Caravelle that got Cat 2 certification in Sept. 1964, with Alitalia started using it in spring of 1966. Before the Trident got Cat 2 ( Feb. 1968 ), the Caravelle was already certified ( in Feb. 1967 ) to Cat 3A.

[Airways Ed]

Yes, the Caravelle was the first jet airliner to perform an autoland (September 1962), and thousands were made in tests, and Cat II and Cat IIIA approval well before the Trident.

Certification cleared the use of autopilot to a DH of 15m/50ft (Cat IIIA) -- because of the single-channel autopilot -- so it was a manual flare (with automatic help in the lateral plane and auto-throttle).

The Trident went on to Cat IIIB in 1975.

(The first commercial aircraft to make a ground-controlled automatic landing was the Boeing 247, in 1944; however, in England and flown by a RAF pilot.)