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To: willcousa who wrote (144319)	9/28/2001 9:04:17 PM
From: BelowTheCrowd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

I was speaking specifically of commercial aircraft. Many light aircraft have no autopilots at all. Even many commuter airplanes have no autopilots. Skywest, for example, does not put autopilots on their basic turboprops. Older commercial aircraft do not have digital Flight Management Systems. Many of the controls are still mechanical and/or based on mechanical/analog inputs from sensors on the airplane. They would be very hard to retrofit for remote control. This includes most 737s, 747s prior to the -400 series, older DC-9/MD-80 variants and many others. It also depends on how various airlines chose to equip their aircraft. Some equip no aircraft for autoland operations, some equip only a few, some equip larger numbers. (For a variety of logistical reasons, it's virtually impossible to keep all flight crews qualified for those operations at all times, so keeping all aircraft equipped that way is generally an unnecessary expense.) Hope this clarifies. mg