From what I understand, HUDs can allow pilots to hand fly CATIIIb approaches down to 50 feet radio minimums, and situations that'd warrant an autoland in a HUDless plane can be flown with the yoke, minus the wind requirements for autolands. This had made them quite popular with American Airlines for example, but not Ryanair. Why is that? After all, Europe is generally a gloomier and foggier place than the sunny American plains, and Ryanair flies quite often into airports without CATIII/CATII systems, so I thought intuitively opposite may have made more sense.

Also it seems like the 737NG was the only airliner with a HUD until the introduction of the 787. What necessitated it?

No need for a HUD to fly CAT 3B

No, but a HUD is one of the options for CAT III ops.

Cost. HUDs aren't free to maintain. So an airline will consider the cost of that against the cost of diverted flights where a HUD would have made a difference.

CAT III isn’t cheap to maintain, either. But for most operators it’s one or the other, not both. Fly with a HUD and you won’t go back, but that’s not part of airline financial considerations. A HUD is a great piece of kit for lots of things beyond CAT III, too.

Trimeresurus wrote:

From what I understand, HUDs can allow pilots to hand fly CATIIIb approaches down to 50 feet radio minimums, and situations that'd warrant an autoland in a HUDless plane can be flown with the yoke, minus the wind requirements for autolands. This had made them quite popular with American Airlines for example, but not Ryanair. Why is that? After all, Europe is generally a gloomier and foggier place than the sunny American plains, and Ryanair flies quite often into airports without CATIII/CATII systems, so I thought intuitively opposite may have made more sense.

Also it seems like the 737NG was the only airliner with a HUD until the introduction of the 787. What necessitated it?

Alaska had HUDs in their 727s and Air Inter in their Mercure aircraft years before the 737NG

Most of the Chinee Narrowbodies crew aren't even certified for CAT II.

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

CAT III isn’t cheap to maintain, either. But for most operators it’s one or the other, not both. Fly with a HUD and you won’t go back, but that’s not part of airline financial considerations. A HUD is a great piece of kit for lots of things beyond CAT III, too.

I’ve flown with many pilots at my carrier, which is HGS only - no autoland, who want to use autoland instead of the HGS. There’s much more that can go wrong with the HGS. Pilots aren’t looking at quite the same thing, FO must be ready to execute a hand-flown missed from 50’, etc.

Having flown autoland and HGS, I’ll take the autoland every day. Greater crew situational awareness in my personal opinion and the go-around is automatic with a button push.

Everyone has a different perspective, but personally I like autoland for low visibility approaches over the HGS.

saab2000 wrote:

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

CAT III isn’t cheap to maintain, either. But for most operators it’s one or the other, not both. Fly with a HUD and you won’t go back, but that’s not part of airline financial considerations. A HUD is a great piece of kit for lots of things beyond CAT III, too.

I’ve flown with many pilots at my carrier, which is HGS only - no autoland, who want to use autoland instead of the HGS. There’s much more that can go wrong with the HGS. Pilots aren’t looking at quite the same thing, FO must be ready to execute a hand-flown missed from 50’, etc.

Having flown autoland and HGS, I’ll take the autoland every day. Greater crew situational awareness in my personal opinion and the go-around is automatic with a button push.

Everyone has a different perspective, but personally I like autoland for low visibility approaches over the HGS.

It is a trade off. They've shown that hand flown HUD approaches are flown more accurately than autolands and are less susceptible to errors in understanding automation. The other thing is that a HUD has a use outside CATIII weather, as mentioned before, and the use keeps crews proficient.

I wouldn’t want to trade autoland capability for a HUD but I’d like to have it as an additional aid

In the 757/67 we were able to use an alert height of 100’ RA and could operate down to zero ceiling and 75M visibility

With this capability I never had to divert from any destination airport, even in dense fog in the worst European winters

A HUD seems nice but it’s a lot higher workload for the pilot flying especially when fatigued

With the autoland system the aircraft does all the work and it doesn’t care how bad the visibility is, one pilot can look outside and the other monitors the AP and flight path, their workload is much lower than with one pilot hand flying


With an alert height no visual references are needed whatsoever, at 100’ RA the crew just verifies no flags or warnings then continues on to the autoland


I have done autolands where the first indication we have touched down is the speed brakes extending, there were no visual cues whatsoever


With the built in rollout guidance steering the aircraft down the centerline and the autobrakes decelerating the aircraft all I had to do was select reverse thrust

It is the best system by far, although as stated it would be nice to have a HUD with the technology to see through clouds (like in certain biz jets) for one pilot to be looking outside through


But I wouldn’t give up autolanding capability for anything

Not worth its own thread but I flew on a DL A321neo and the seatback flight data had a CGI HUD display. It was as if you were looking out the cockpit windows. I've never seen that before.

Yeah, but it’s not the HUD really and it ends at 10,000’. It was interesting to watch the flight go around weather on the GA/FL border. MyRadar app showed the weather and correlate that with “HUD” view.

johns624 wrote:

Not worth its own thread but I flew on a DL A321neo and the seatback flight data had a CGI HUD display. It was as if you were looking out the cockpit windows. I've never seen that before.

The A350 has the same.

It bugs me though, as the tapes show ground speed and GPS altitude, not IAS and pressure altitude.

johns624 wrote:

Not worth its own thread but I flew on a DL A321neo and the seatback flight data had a CGI HUD display. It was as if you were looking out the cockpit windows. I've never seen that before.

Is there a photo of this?

Trimeresurus wrote:

johns624 wrote:

Not worth its own thread but I flew on a DL A321neo and the seatback flight data had a CGI HUD display. It was as if you were looking out the cockpit windows. I've never seen that before.

Is there a photo of this?

Yeah, I think I took but don’t know how to post it. For a pilot, it’s hokey; but is better than the useless maps.

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

Trimeresurus wrote:

johns624 wrote:

Not worth its own thread but I flew on a DL A321neo and the seatback flight data had a CGI HUD display. It was as if you were looking out the cockpit windows. I've never seen that before.

Is there a photo of this?

Yeah, I think I took but don’t know how to post it. For a pilot, it’s hokey; but is better than the useless maps.

Make a free account on Imgur or another similar service. https://imgur.com/

Upload the pic to there.

Embed the image link here.

Max Q wrote:

Trimeresurus wrote:

From what I understand, HUDs can allow pilots to hand fly CATIIIb approaches down to 50 feet radio minimums, and situations that'd warrant an autoland in a HUDless plane can be flown with the yoke, minus the wind requirements for autolands. This had made them quite popular with American Airlines for example, but not Ryanair. Why is that? After all, Europe is generally a gloomier and foggier place than the sunny American plains, and Ryanair flies quite often into airports without CATIII/CATII systems, so I thought intuitively opposite may have made more sense.

Also it seems like the 737NG was the only airliner with a HUD until the introduction of the 787. What necessitated it?

Alaska had HUDs in their 727s and Air Inter in their Mercure aircraft years before the 737NG

Didn't the MD-80 have HUD as an option?

Funny you mention it, I do have an account there. I thought I took a picture, but no I didnt

Starlionblue wrote:

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

Trimeresurus wrote:

Is there a photo of this?

Yeah, I think I took but don’t know how to post it. For a pilot, it’s hokey; but is better than the useless maps.

Make a free account on Imgur or another similar service. https://imgur.com/

Upload the pic to there.

Embed the image link here.

https://imgur.com/a/tF00fDH
Thanks! Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks!

johns624 wrote:

Starlionblue wrote:

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

Yeah, I think I took but don’t know how to post it. For a pilot, it’s hokey; but is better than the useless maps.

Make a free account on Imgur or another similar service. https://imgur.com/

Upload the pic to there.

Embed the image link here.

https://imgur.com/a/tF00fDH
Thanks! Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks!

Oh so it's like the synthetic vision in the G1000? I didn't know airliners had/needed it

Trimeresurus wrote:

johns624 wrote:

Starlionblue wrote:

Make a free account on Imgur or another similar service. https://imgur.com/

Upload the pic to there.

Embed the image link here.

https://imgur.com/a/tF00fDH
Thanks! Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks!

Oh so it's like the synthetic vision in the G1000? I didn't know airliners had/needed it

No, this is on the passenger seatback TV.

I think it's a feature of the (Panasonic?) IFE system. MH A350s and AC 737 MAXs (at least, from experience) have the HUD view.

SEAorPWM wrote:

Max Q wrote:

Trimeresurus wrote:

From what I understand, HUDs can allow pilots to hand fly CATIIIb approaches down to 50 feet radio minimums, and situations that'd warrant an autoland in a HUDless plane can be flown with the yoke, minus the wind requirements for autolands. This had made them quite popular with American Airlines for example, but not Ryanair. Why is that? After all, Europe is generally a gloomier and foggier place than the sunny American plains, and Ryanair flies quite often into airports without CATIII/CATII systems, so I thought intuitively opposite may have made more sense.

Also it seems like the 737NG was the only airliner with a HUD until the introduction of the 787. What necessitated it?

Alaska had HUDs in their 727s and Air Inter in their Mercure aircraft years before the 737NG

Didn't the MD-80 have HUD as an option?

Not sure, sure didn’t on the ones I flew, we had VOR / ILS / DME and an NDB receiver, that was it !

Max Q wrote:

SEAorPWM wrote:

Max Q wrote:

Alaska had HUDs in their 727s and Air Inter in their Mercure aircraft years before the 737NG

Didn't the MD-80 have HUD as an option?

Not sure, sure didn’t on the ones I flew, we had VOR / ILS / DME and an NDB receiver, that was it !

No GPS later on, or did you move on before CO upgraded the avionics?

N1120A wrote:

Max Q wrote:

SEAorPWM wrote:

Didn't the MD-80 have HUD as an option?

Not sure, sure didn’t on the ones I flew, we had VOR / ILS / DME and an NDB receiver, that was it !

No GPS later on, or did you move on before CO upgraded the avionics?

I don’t remember our MD80s getting retrofitted with GPS, I left that aircraft and moved on to the 757 in 1997 and the 767 in 2000, they certainly didn’t have GPS before I left


It’s quite possible though, CO retrofitted a number of 727-200s with GPS before retiring them and they were a lot older !

johns624 wrote:

Starlionblue wrote:

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

Yeah, I think I took but don’t know how to post it. For a pilot, it’s hokey; but is better than the useless maps.

Make a free account on Imgur or another similar service. https://imgur.com/

Upload the pic to there.

Embed the image link here.

https://imgur.com/a/tF00fDH
Thanks! Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks!

You can even embed it like this.

Trimeresurus wrote:

johns624 wrote:

Starlionblue wrote:

Make a free account on Imgur or another similar service. https://imgur.com/

Upload the pic to there.

Embed the image link here.

https://imgur.com/a/tF00fDH
Thanks! Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks!

Oh so it's like the synthetic vision in the G1000? I didn't know airliners had/needed it

It's purely a "computer game" representation. It is not synthetic vision.

Delaxio wrote:

I think it's a feature of the (Panasonic?) IFE system. MH A350s and AC 737 MAXs (at least, from experience) have the HUD view.

Off topic, but WN now has it too, active above 10,000 ft.