Originally Posted by
aceman
Can they use auto land at any airport? pretty sure I had 3 attempts at landing in JER on ba once before giving up and returning to gatwick.
I think that depends on the category/ operation of the ILS system as every category has a different decision height (e.g. the point the pilot can verify that the plane actually lands on the touchdown zone and can safely roll out) and RVR. Cat 3b requires 15m decision height and a runway visual range of 50m. As these weather minima would not require sufficient visual references, Cat 3b (like all Cat 3a-c approaches) requires an autoland.
Cat 3c requires 0m decision height/ RVR (so no need for any pilot verification - I guess what most of us would understand as autoland) but I am not sure which airports have that capability (and at many airports, some runways have a different ILS Cat).
MUC can especially require pilots to use Cat 3b on a foggy day, whilst in summer ATC can announce Cat 2 Ops (e.g. pilots can fly manual to the runway if they like).
[please note - I am not a pilot so please excuse my poor wording]