Originally Posted By: 72te27
Generally speaking, autopilots are used to land the airplane only in extremely low visibilty conditions.
Generally speaking, low visibility conditions in which you can actually land tend to occur in low wind conditions.
As a result, most instrument approaches that are in such low vis conditions that they require an autoland, known as a Catagory II (CAT II) or Catagory III (Cat III) ILS (Instrument Landing System), occur in relatively low wind situations.
I say "Generally speaking" because there are plenty of exceptions. As Astro14 said, there are numerous
limitations for performing autoland approaches, including several wind limitations such as crosswind limits.
For an autoland in the aircraft I fly, there is a crosswind limitation of 15 knots. If the "braking action" is reported as less than "good", the limitation becomes 10 knots crosswind. Again, these are for autopilot flown autolandings. For manually flown landings, which happen in far greater numbers, the crosswind limitations are somewhat higher.
This is right on, and more than I could type on my iPad.
"over-reliance on automated systems" is a ridiculous claim. When the visibility goes below CAT 1 (1/2 mile, give or take), you have to use a HUD or autoland to land the plane.
That's not over-reliance, that's reality. We autoland (or HUD, for some guys) all the time...
And most of us hand-fly, turn off flight directors, etc. the rest of the time in order to maintain our skills. We're pilots, after all.