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Comment by snom380 | Hacker News Reader

Because machines aren't perfect either. Airports already have those transmitters and can autoland, but pilots always have to be ready to take over, and sometimes have to. There are just too many things that can go wrong technically to not have trained, proficient pilots in the cockpit.

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I didn't argue not having pilots in the cockpit. I'm arguing against pilots being in manual control of the plane when landing when the plane is capable of landing itself. If it isn't, fine, have a pilot take over, but that shouldn't be the case 99% of the time.

If pilots only hand flew 1% of landings, they wouldn't be sufficiently practised to do a good job. The simulator just can't recreate real world conditions accurately enough to be relied on totally.

Hence, pilots must fly a certain number of manual and auto landings in a quarter to stay legal.

Exactly. A contributing cause of AF447 was a lack of high altitude flying experience and training on emergencies there, since the training regime is traditionally focused on the more accident-prone takeoff and landing phases.

The glide slope transmitter for the ILS approach on runway 28L at SFO was out of service since June 1. That said, I believe there is an alternate, GPS-based system that could have been available as an alternative for automated approach.

I'd suppose that given a pilot with low experience on that aircraft and relatively good conditions, this was considered a good opportunity to get a visual approach and landing under his belt. That presumes a lot, of course.

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