this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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Autopilot is an accurate name as it takes over the mundane portions of the task. Airline pilots don't just hit a green button on the dash that says "fly" and the autopilot takes over until they hit a red "land" button. You can argue that people have a misconception about the word but the word itself is correct.
It's my understanding that they actually could do that at this point, commerical flying is a controlled and predictable environment compared to driving on the road. Ten years ago I was hearing anecdotes from pilots saying the only thing they do is takeoff and land and even then the computer could handle it just fine if they let it. Maybe the autopilot in a Cesna sucks, but it's pretty much fully automated in an Airbus.