Nearly all widebody (two aisle) and many narrowbody (single aisle) aircraft with a seating capacity over ~120 seats flown by US domestic airlines are equipped with autoland (I can't speak for foreign carriers). It's generally not used other than occasional functional checks (once a month) or during exceptionally poor weather (visibility less than 800 feet). Use of autoland requires what is referred to as a Category II or Category III instrument landing system (ILS) approach, which is the ground based radio navigation aid associated with a particular runway. Cat II/III ILS systems are only found at large airports where the cost can be justified. The most capable systems are "Cat IIIc" which allow landing in zero visibility. Finding the gate after landing in such conditions ends up being more problematic than landing the aircraft. Category I approaches (visibility as low as 1800 feet) and some Cat II approaches are typically hand flown.
Autoland systems are quite good and often one-up the flight crew with a nice touchdown (speaking from personal experience - it's hard to swallow the machine doing a better job!). Many autoland equipped aircraft also have autobrakes which will either slow or completely stop the aircraft on the runway.
mu_wtfo raises an excellent point regarding RF from wireless gear getting into equipment. 5 watts is enough to smoke a television -- literally. Accidently fried the soft power on a green room monitor with a 3 watt radio years ago.
Even low output consumer wireless gear will present problems. For example, in the consumer space, GSM cellphones are especially problematic. They'll cause RFI headaches in nearly anything electronic. My video production organization needed to ban all RF emitting equipment from the production truck after GSM phones caused audio and video interferance during several live feeds.
Nearly all widebody (two aisle) and many narrowbody (single aisle) aircraft with a seating capacity over ~120 seats flown by US domestic airlines are equipped with autoland (I can't speak for foreign carriers). It's generally not used other than occasional functional checks (once a month) or during exceptionally poor weather (visibility less than 800 feet). Use of autoland requires what is referred to as a Category II or Category III instrument landing system (ILS) approach, which is the ground based radio navigation aid associated with a particular runway. Cat II/III ILS systems are only found at large airports where the cost can be justified. The most capable systems are "Cat IIIc" which allow landing in zero visibility. Finding the gate after landing in such conditions ends up being more problematic than landing the aircraft. Category I approaches (visibility as low as 1800 feet) and some Cat II approaches are typically hand flown. Autoland systems are quite good and often one-up the flight crew with a nice touchdown (speaking from personal experience - it's hard to swallow the machine doing a better job!). Many autoland equipped aircraft also have autobrakes which will either slow or completely stop the aircraft on the runway.
mu_wtfo raises an excellent point regarding RF from wireless gear getting into equipment. 5 watts is enough to smoke a television -- literally. Accidently fried the soft power on a green room monitor with a 3 watt radio years ago. Even low output consumer wireless gear will present problems. For example, in the consumer space, GSM cellphones are especially problematic. They'll cause RFI headaches in nearly anything electronic. My video production organization needed to ban all RF emitting equipment from the production truck after GSM phones caused audio and video interferance during several live feeds.