On Sat, 24 Dec 2005 at 12:39:26 in message
, Dave Doe
wrote:

David, is it true that all widebody a/c are autolanded (in gen)?

I am not in a position to know that. All I can say is that I was on an
A320 flight into Gatwick where the Captain announced that the aircraft
had just completed an automatic landing.

I was also once lucky enough to be present on the flight deck of a
747-400 as it flew into Kennedy. That was definitely a manual landing! A
good one too and visibility was great.

My guess is that it is likely that pilots carry out their mandatory
occasional auto-lands but probably make manual landings more often. I
believe there are still a number of airports in use which do not have
auto-land capability. I doubt that auto-land can be set up for in
Madeira as from one direction the aircraft is not aligned with the
runway until about half a mile to the threshold. (At least that used to
be the case!)

For the up to date information we need a current Captain!
--
David CL Francis