Autopilot or manual

falconxxx wrote:

Question pertaining to real world heavy metal pilots, when landing in an ILS runway and the weather is fair, do you have an option whether to land manually or does regulation states that you have to land the plane with autopilot on?

First, only some specially equipped aircraft are certified to land on autopilot(AP), most are not. It also depends on if the airline has been approved for autoland in a particular model aircraft. Even the ones that can be landed on autopilot can only accomplish this on certain runways with a CAT III ILS system, most ILS systems don't qualify.

Normally, the pilot turns off the AP no lower than 200 above the ground and hand flown to a landing. During good weather, pilots use the ILS as backup and to help with vertical navigation(regulations require airline aircraft to maintain at or above the Glideslope even in good weather, if equipped to receive signal), ATC will often instruct an aircraft to intercept the localizer even in good weather, they know exactly where the aircraft is traveling.

Normally, the use of the AP is at pilots discretion.

Thanks for the info CRJCapt