[noodlesUK]

I mean, should this technology actually be very reliable in adverse conditions, it’s 50% of a self-flying plane. I don’t know how much auto-landing currently exists in the commercial airliner industry, but I suspect it’ll be much easier to build self-flying planes than self-driving cars.

[nexuist]

Autoland has existed in commercial airliners since the late '80s. It is really not much more than a mathematical equation given the feedback provided by ILS (which tells the airplane exactly how far off it is from the runway in both lateral and vertical directions).

However, pilots prefer to land by hand mainly because it gives them something to do (and it's fun). Additionally, not much thought was given to comfort when these autoland systems were made, and last I heard nobody recommends actually using them as they have a nasty habit of planting the plane into the runway (apparently, they're not programmed to flare before touchdown, resulting in all of the landing gear hitting the pavement at once). This is not really dangerous, but it does impact the lifespan of the landing gear and also gives the passengers quite a kick.

These problems are relatively minor and can be fixed in software, but we still have planes kicking from the '80s, so it will take a while for those changes to trickle down. Nonetheless, I am confident we can build a comfortable autoland in the present day.