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Lufthansa went through a 4000fpm rate of descent incident a couple of weeks ago. The loss of altitude had been caused by two angle of attack sensors having frozen in their positions during climb at an angle, that caused the fly by wire protection to assume, the aircraft entered a stall while it climbed through FL310.

http://www.aeroinside.com/item...

With regular updates: http://www.aeroinside.com/item...

http://www.aeroinside.com/item...

There are tons of rumours spreading in mass media, most of it are not true or are outdated sooner or later. A good writeup is this article on AeroInside.com: http://www.aeroinside.com/item...

... after it has been found, that the cause for a crash of an Embraer 195 in Africa has been linked directly to the captain being alone on the flight deck, putting the engines to idle and descend rapidly...

http://www.aeroinside.com/item/3416/lam-e190-over-botswana-namibia-on-nov-29th-2013-captain-intentionally-crashed-aircraft

Airplanes already have the technology that lets the aircraft fly better than a human in normal conditions, but pilots don't want to give up complete control and want to be able to override the computer in exceptional conditions - taking over in conditions that the designers didn't plan for is why we still have pilots in the cockpit. There could be a good reason why the pilot wants to override the aircraft and put the engines in idle, so even if the plane tried to take over, a captain that wanted to do something stupid (either because he wants to crash the plane, or he's more confused than the plane about what the right thing to do is), he'd just hit the override button.

... after it has been found, that the cause for a crash of an Embraer 195 in Africa has been linked directly to the captain being alone on the flight deck, putting the engines to idle and descend rapidly... http://www.aeroinside.com/item/3416/lam-e190-over-botswana-namibia-on-nov-29th-2013-captain-intentionally-crashed-aircraft

For those who care - there has been new findings from the NTSB about the last part of the flight prior to impact.

"In an interview with Korean Authorities the pilot flying reported that a flash of light occurred at 500 feet which temporarily blinded him, the NTSB confirmed that this was mentioned in their interview as a temporary event, too."

Details: http://www.aeroinside.com/item/2761/asiana-b772-at-san-francisco-on-jul-6th-2013-touched-down-short-of-the-runway-broke-up-and-burst-into-flames

Normally you would intercept the localizer (lateral guidance), then the glide slope signal (altitude guidance) via auto pilot and then disconnect the auto pilot shortly before landing and flare manually.

On this day, the glide slope signal was not available due to maintenance work and therefore, the pilot flying (PF) needed to fly the approach and landing manually - which he fucked up.

More details on this article from AeroInside.com Coming back to your question - auto land needs to demonstrated per plane on a continous base, e.g. monthly - no matter what weather is.