Can An Airplane Land Itself?

Yes, Virginia, Garmin’s Autoland system is real, and it was recently used for the first time in an emergency situation, protecting the lives of the two pilots on board, which you may have heard about in the news. As usual, there’s more to the story.

Garmin Autoland is not the same as autoland in an airliner, which has been around since 1965 and is used to land airplanes safely in near zero-zero fog conditions. There are various categories of airline autoland, with the most capable called CAT IIIa, and it’s an amazing system but far too costly and complex for business jets and light aircraft. The complexity side isn’t necessarily from an equipment standpoint, but from the many regulations that allow landing in zero-zero fog. It happens so rarely that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze for a business jet.

However, Garmin, which manufactures avionics (aviation electronics) for light aircraft and business jets, figured out a simple way around the regulatory burden of normal autoland operations: make it for emergencies only. 

Garmin’s Autoland is not a simple system, however. To work, it either detects an anomaly such as a pressurization failure or the pilot not interacting with the aircraft over a certain time period, then it engages. Or the pilot or a passenger can push the Autoland button to engage the system. For example, if there is just one pilot flying a HondaJet and he or she conks out, a passenger could push the Autoland button or simply wait for it to engage.

Once engaged, Autoland looks for and navigates to the nearest suitable airport, switches the airplane’s transponder to the emergency code 7700 (remember that, it might come in handy someday), and broadcasts what’s going on via the international emergency frequency 121.5 (remember that one too) and local airport frequencies. During the recent autoland activation in Colorado, which happened in a Beechcraft King Air B200 twin-engine turboprop, the broadcast sounded like this in a quasi-female stern voice: “Niner-bravo-romeo, pilot incapacitation, two miles south of kilo-bravo-juliet-charlie, emergency autoland in 19 minutes on Runway three zero right at kilo-bravo-juliet-charlie.”

“Niner-bravo-romeo” are the last three digits of the King Air’s registration number (N479BR) and “kilo-bravo-juliet-charlie” is the airport that autoland picked, Rocky Mountain Metropolitan or in airplane-speak, KBJC.

The air traffic controller working the tower at KBJC recognized that the King Air was coming in under automatic guidance and basically stopped aircraft on the ground and told airborne traffic to go hold somewhere else. He even tried calling the King Air on the radio to tell the crew that they were cleared to land on any runway. While the pilots likely heard this, the airplane was under automatic control, and it doesn’t respond to incoming transmissions.

As Autoland does, it guided the King Air towards KBJC, did a big circle to lose altitude, lined up with the runway, lowered the flaps and landing gear, adjusted the power, landed, applied the brakes, stopped on the runway, then shut the engines down. Inside the cockpit, the avionics displays showed helpful messages that are focused on making passengers comfortable during an autoland emergency. 

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In an Emergency, Cirrus Vision Jet Can Land Itself

Plus: its whole airframe parachute provides an extra layer of protection.

Now in this case, it turned out that neither of the pilots was incapacitated, even though there was a pressurization failure. And they apparently chose to ride the Autoland all the way to the ground, when they did have the choice of switching it off. If, for example, a pilot or passenger accidentally pushes the Autoland button, the pilot can turn it off by pressing one of two autopilot disconnect switches.

Garmin’s Autoland is a fascinating system and is now available in a variety of airplanes (no helicopters, yet), mostly the owner-flown types. These include the new Cirrus SR G7+ (the smallest airplanes with autoland) and Vision Jet, Piper M600 and M700, Daher TBM 940/960, Epic E1000 AX, Pilatus PC-12 Pro, and soon the HondaJet, Beechcraft Denali, and some Citation models. There are plenty of accidents where Autoland would have saved lots of lives, especially pressurization failures in business jets where the jet is on autopilot and flies till it runs out of gas and crashes (Payne Stewart), so don’t be surprised to see more manufacturers adopting Autoland, at least in Garmin-equipped airplanes. So far, no word from Collins, Honeywell, Moog, Thales, or Universal Avionics as to whether they’re planning an autoland-type system.

If you’re in the market for an airplane, think of the peace of mind for your spouse/partner and passengers if you’ve got that big, bright-red autoland button in your cockpit.