Ron Natalie writes:

Sometimes it's BETTER FORM to use the autopilot on shorter flights.
Enroute is generally a lot of inactivity. Takeoff and landing
is the busy part of IFR. Best to off-load onto George when
you are busy.

I'm confused. Are you saying that autopilot should be used on
take-off and landing?

It seems that most autopilots aren't much help with take-off and
landing, beyond following an ILS approach most of the way in. Large
aircraft have fancy stuff that can autoland, but I don't know if small
aircraft can be equipped in that way (?).

Turbulence can actually be more difficult on the autopilot. It
wants to hold you to course and altitude and tends to overcontrol
to stay there. Hand flying you're willing to take the slight
deviations because you know it will even out in the long term.

Interesting. Are there any fancy autopilots that are smart enough to
deal with turbulence?

On a commercial airliner, wouldn't it be preferable to let the
autopilot wrestle with the turbulence in order to avoid upsetting
passengers with more radical movements in hand flying (assuming that
the pilot does not attempt to correct for minor movements from
turbulence)?

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