If worse came to worse, can you manually fly these planes? Inquiring passenger wants to know.
Sure. Flight crews do this frequently during landing. In fact I would venture to say that commercial airliners are more often landed manually than using autoland, although the autoland works just fine. However, what an autopilot/autothrottle/autoland system cannot do is anticipate. It reacts, and it can react very fast, but it can't anticipate.
A good example of this is one I was given by a United 747 pilot (I used to be involved in the production of United's TV commercials) who described to me why he hated doing autolands an Honolulu International Airport. At the time HNL had only one long runway, Runway 8, which also had the only ILS approach.
The approach to runway 8 (today runway 8L) comes in over the entrance channel to Pearl Harbor. At that point the planes are very low, only a few hundred feet up. Cooler air sinks, warmer air rises. So the plane would be tracking the ILS just fine on autoland with the power being set by the autothrottle. On short final in an established descent the power was back pretty much at flight idle.
Then the plane would fly over the Pearl Harbor entrance channel and into the sinking, cooler air above the water. The plane would drop suddenly with the air, The auto throttle would immediately add power. But unlike a reciprocating engine, a turbofan has to spool up before it actually starts generating additional thrust and it takes a bit once more thrust is generated for it to overcome the inertia of the plane. So there is a delay of several to a lot of seconds between the power levers going forward and something actually happening.
The plane was across the channel in seconds and back in the warmer air over land, so the drop was never enough to actually get the plane in trouble. But the pilot told me it was very nerve wracking to sit there knowing this sudden sink was coming and that he couldn't do anything about it (at the time pilots were required to perform x-number of autolands a month to remain current),
Normally, he said, they hand-flew the plane down final approach, which meant that before they got to the Pearl Harbor entrance channel they would add power and get the engines spooled up in advance of actually needing the thrust to stay on the glide path as they crossed the channel.
In other words, the pilots could anticipate what was coming and prepare the plane for it where the autopilot/autothrottle was just sitting there fat, dumb and happy until something happened at which point it would react.
BUT..... as airplane's flight management systems become more and more sophisticated and capable, it's possible to program in "anticipation" using known conditions or occurrences data. So the Pearl Harbor entrance channel "sink" could be programmed into a flight management system. It would "know" what was coming and could get the engine's spooled up in anticipation of needing more thrust.
Combine this with the vastly improved information coming from sensors on the ground in terms of temperatures, air movement, etc. which can be transmitted to the plane, and automation can indeed be "taught" to anticipate.
While human pilots always erupt in howls of protest over this, I can tell you that both Boeing and Airbus and the designers of flight management systems are very actively working on perfecting the pilotless commercial airliner. It can actually be done now very easily although there is more work to be done on the "anticipation" aspect I described above because of the staggering number of variables that can affect an aircraft in flight.
The other obstacle, of course, is passenger acceptance. In fact that is the harder hurdle to clear, not safely automating the plane. But it will happen eventually, just as manned elevators gave way to automatic elevators the world over and today people think nothing of getting into the elevators in the Burj Kalifa in Dubai, the world's tallest building, and heading up a half a mile in a box at 50 mph.
Not that there won't be anyone who knows about the plane on board. But the role of the flight crew will initially be replaced with an airplane "systems manager" who, from the design studies I've seen, most likely won't even be where the flight deck is today but will be with the flight management systems hardware in the e-bay, which these days is in the lower lobe of the plane under the first class cabin (on multi-class airplanes). The flight deck will cease to exist and be used to generate revenue with more seats like the main deck of the 747. And eventually, the systems manager won't even be needed.
But don't lie awake at night worrying about your next flight to visit Aunt Sue in Cleveland, as the chief mechanic for the 777 program used to say. This level of automation is a long ways off yet, relatively speaking.
What is interesting is to witness the attitude of the young engineers joining Boeing (and I assume Airbus: both companies are virtually identical except for their locations). They are not saddled with the traditional views of flight crews and flight decks and control input systems and whatnot. They are thinking full automation right out of college. And, in thirty years, they will be the ones calling the shots and running the airplane programs at both companies.
I am producing a video right now about the new engineers joining the company and it's amazing to hear them talk and express their visions of the future of aviation.
Next year marks Boeing's 100th anniversary. Given the acceleration of technology, the next 100 years will be mind blowing, at least to people like us if we were here to see it. To the people running the company then, it will be their normal.
Below is one of my favorite photos, Orville Wright (L) standing under the engine of a Lockheed Constellation in 1944. In 41 years the airplane had progressed from the Wright Flyer to the Constellation. Forty one years from now, I suspect commercial aviation will not even remotely resemble what we know today.