In another installment of their He Said, She Said series (see the May 2025 issue of King Air magazine), Joe and Deanna Casey offer their reactions to and takeaways from the late December activation of Garmin’s automated landing system in a Beechcraft King Air 200. Read their differing views below and weigh in by sending your opinion to melinda@kingairmagazine.com.
He Said
It finally happened. Garmin Autoland has landed an airplane in real-world conditions. The long-awaited “save” has occurred, and I’m sure Garmin is thrilled its automated landing system “saved the day.” On Dec. 20, 2025, a Beechcraft King Air 200 (N479BR) automatically activated at FL230 as a result of the Autoland system sensing a high cabin altitude. The King Air B200 was piloted by two pilots and the pilots elected to allow Autoland to continue to the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (KBJC), with all functions of Autoland performing flawlessly.
But was this a real save?
I’ve been stating for years that Garmin Autoland is a “solution looking for a problem.” Introduced in 2019 in a Piper M600/SLS, Autoland took the aviation market by storm. It was hailed as a real safety feature that would make flying safer. I agree it has. We are safer today because Autoland is available. But how much safer?
As of this writing (December 2025), there are over 1,700 airplanes that have Autoland installed, and there has not been one single confirmed deployment until now. That is a bunch of airplanes! It’s difficult to know how many flight hours that represents, and I doubt Garmin even knows the exact number of hours flown with Autoland installed. But we can make an educated assessment. By approximating 150 hours per airplane per year of flight time, and applying a sliding scale of production, a conservative, personally derived estimate would be about 250,000 hours of flight in aircraft with Autoland installed.
Yet we have only one record of actual real-world deployment. And, with this deployment nobody pushed the button. The Autoland deployment in N479BR was an automatic deployment after a rapid decompression when the Autoland system sensed a high cabin altitude. I’ve been telling clients no one has pushed the button (and that it is a solution looking for a problem), and I can still tell them no one has pushed the Autoland button. But, to Garmin’s credit, Autoland is no longer a solution looking for a problem. It found a problem, and it did a fine job of solving the problem.
Armchair quarterbacking?
I hate to armchair quarterback a flight crew, but we rarely get to dissect a flight where no metal was bent and no one got hurt. Usually, metal-bending/fatal events get dissected by the FAA and NTSB and are fodder for consideration after years of time have passed. Fatal accidents are what we really want to avoid, and there’s always (or should be) an appropriate grace period to allow friends and family to grieve.
In this emergency, there’s probably not going to be an official NTSB or FAA investigation. The only trauma that could occur after careful dissection of this emergency would be the possible injury to the emotional health of the two pilots. I’m interested in the aviation community learning from this emergency, both how the Autoland activated and performed, and how the pilots handled the automation. This one is fair game for analysis; no grace period required!
I’ve got to hand it to the pilots; they did a good job! The airplane landed without injury to the airplane or the occupants. All’s well that ends well, right? Yes, well, maybe … sort of … possibly?
I train in aircraft with Autoland installed a lot, probably more than 250 hours of training each year. And I train in the aircraft in real-flight scenarios. I’ve administered thousands of rapid decompression training events and evaluated rapid decompression events during FAA check rides. There’s one overriding, abundantly clear personal observation from my decades of training/evaluating: Those who handle the emergency the best are the ones who grab the flight controls and actually fly the airplane, and the worst handling comes from the ones who respond initially and primarily with button-pushing.
My usual training scenario is to have the client climb the airplane in VFR conditions when I’ve discreetly disabled the pressurization system. This is most easily accomplished by stopping the bleed air from entering the cabin while the airplane is on the ground. The pilot will then climb the airplane unpressurized, usually blissfully ignorant of the pressurization problem. When the airplane gets to 10,000 msl, a CABIN ALT advisory light will illuminate, and this is usually enough of a signal to the pilot that something is not right. They usually look at me and say, “What’d you do?” To which I reply, “How would you handle this situation if we were at 20,000 feet instead of 10,000 feet?” The pilots who respond appropriately/best don the mask, grab the controls, pull the power back to idle, possibly lower the landing gear, notify ATC of the situation and then get the automation to help the situation.
The worst pilots don’t don a mask and attempt to use the automation to fly the airplane. These pilots are button pushers as opposed to real pilots who are not scared to actually fly. I’ve seen this time and again: the worst pilots go directly to the automation, and most of the time they push buttons errantly. Most put the airplane in a worse situation than they were in prior; we don’t push buttons well in an emergency. Yes, a pilot can push the level button or the ALT button to stop the climb. Yes, a pilot can put a suitable lower altitude in the altitude preselect and select a descent mode that is appropriate. All these button-pushing actions are good but they are only good after the pilot grabs the flight controls and initiates an appropriate response to the situation. Get the airplane moving in the most obvious way – move the flight controls!
My only argument to the conduct of the flight in N479BR after the depressurization event is that the crew allowed automation to save the day instead of grabbing the flight controls and flying the airplane. I’m less concerned with quarterbacking their specific conduct on this flight than I am with the negative message that the handling of this flight shouts to the pilot community. With the message “If you get into trouble, push the buttons,” I fear we are migrating to a culture where button-pushing is hailed as an acceptable replacement for good hand-flying. It should be the other way around. Hand-flying the airplane is absolutely required!
Put down the rope …
Let there be no mincing of my message. I’m not throwing the pilots of this flight under the bus! In my opinion, they elected to allow automation to do its job, and they then monitored. Based on the public statement from Buffalo River Aviation, the company that manages the aircraft in which this Part 91 flight occurred, neither pilot was incapacitated and the crew elected to monitor the flight with Autoland. There has been no public response from the pilots, and credible news sources have certainly requested interviews. My suspicion is that their silence is a function of a company-mandated muting and probably a self-created desire to avoid any sort of FAA-punitive action. Let me be the first to state that I hope the FAA drops any thought of probing these two pilots for any possible pilot deviation. We are in a strange new world now, with technology being far ahead of any rules. Simply put, I know of no rule that these pilots violated.
My problem is the message that has been shouted: “Technology saved the flight!” It just ain’t so. These pilots elected to allow technology to help, and I sense neither they nor the flight needed saving. If this airplane had not had Autoland installed, I suspect this situation would have been handled just fine.
As much as Garmin would love for Autoland to get a true save in the books, to land an airplane where the pilot is incapacitated and there are no other rated pilots on board to save the flight, this flight is not a true save in my opinion. Will there eventually be a save? Yes! And, when that happens, I’ll be one of the loudest cheerleaders for this awesome technology.
In the meantime, we need to focus on the real threats that befall us in aviation. The deadly stall/spin accident, runway incursions, midair accidents, loss of control on takeoff/landing are all serious threats to our beloved King Air aircraft, far greater threats than pilot incapacitation. All these accidents hinge upon the quality of the pilot in the left seat. All require a pilot who knows how to move the flight controls. Let’s not major on a minor.
Let’s call this flight what it really is: a real-world deployment of fabulous technology, a great validation of what we hoped would work in the real world, but not a save.
She Said
How does that armchair you’re sitting in feel? Do you have a cup of coffee or an iced drink in hand as you’re reading this article? I bet you’re comfortable and the temperature and noise level are just right in the room where you’re sitting (unless you’re reading this in a pilot lounge, in which case you’re probably uncomfortably familiar with the nasal noises made by the guy in the recliner next to you). My point is: as you’re browsing this magazine, catching up on emailed news updates or reading through your favorite pro-pilot social media forums, you’re in a comfortable environment, stationary and able to think clearly through all possible options and opinions without the stress of a fast-paced, heart-racing, noisy environment cluttering up your decision-making process.
You’re in a fabulous spot to think through complex situations and come up with an “if that were me” scenario with the hindsight of someone else’s decisions and without the pressure of the actual conditions. It’s nice, right?
This comfort level is how we get great case studies and potentially new training protocols by learning from how someone else handled an emergency. With hindsight, we all learn, so we can then repeat, modify or correct the actions taken to ensure a successful flight outcome. This is the luxury that you, the reader, get over the crew of the recent King Air Autoland activation.
My husband, Joe, has always said, “Autoland is a solution looking for a problem.” Personally, that’s how I prefer my solutions to present themselves – before I encounter the problem they solve!
Too often in the aviation industry, we have regulations, technology and best practices that are reactive in nature to accidents and incidents. Contrary to Joe’s opinion, Garmin’s Autoland technology is the same. Though few and far between, there are plenty of reports of pilot incapacitation in which another pilot or passenger had to take control of the aircraft, or worse, couldn’t take control of the aircraft. That’s why two crew-member planes are always going to be safer than single-pilot operations. Two pilots act as backup systems to each other aiding in the workload, the decision-making process and adding redundancy when one fails, much like the cockpit technology we rely so heavily on.
To (Auto)land or not to (Auto)land? That is the real question
By now, every pro pilot and most others have heard of the King Air that departed Aspen, Colorado, experienced a sudden depressurization at FL230, and successfully landed nearby at Rocky Mountain Metro Airport using Garmin’s Autoland technology. What a great success for Garmin!
The system performed exactly as it was supposed to, and the airplane was reusable (I’ll give you a moment to recite the old “great landing” joke here mentally). What makes this incident (is it an incident?) contradictory is that the two pilot crew members were not actually incapacitated, as the Autoland system was informatively broadcasting, and as would be assumed during this particular “emergency.” We all saw the video of the airplane touching down, rolling to a stop and the engines shutting themselves down as the emergency vehicles waited to assist anyone on board the aircraft. News blasts went out immediately about the incapacitated pilot whose life was saved by the technology. Then came the real story. First responders stated that there was no one to treat or assist. The aircraft’s occupants were just fine. Cue the armchair quarterbacks, keyboard warriors and “experts” … now we have an interesting dilemma in decision-making as pilot-in-command to debate.
Here is an excerpt from the written statement from the aircraft operator Buffalo River Aviation:
Due to the complexity of the specific situation, including instrument meteorological conditions, mountainous terrain, active icing conditions, unknown reasons for loss of pressure and the binary (all-or-nothing) function of the Garmin emergency systems; the pilots, exercising conservative judgment under their emergency command authority (FAR 91.3) made the decision to leave the system engaged while monitoring its performance and attempting communications as able within the constraints of the system. While the system performed exactly as expected, the pilots were prepared to resume manual control of the aircraft should the system have malfunctioned in any way.
Herein lies the rub. A system designed to take over in case of a pilot’s incapacitation did exactly as it was supposed to do, except there was no pilot incapacitation. Had the crew members not donned their oxygen masks promptly, incapacitation could have undoubtedly been the case. But that’s not what happened.
When I’m training pilots in high-altitude operations, I often say that if a depressurization occurs, once you put on your mask, the emergency is over. While that is simplified and removes any nuance to the actual situation at hand, what I mean is that as long as the pilot is breathing and capable of troubleshooting and taking corrective action, the outcome of the flight is rarely in question. At the very least, the pilot should be able to descend to a breathable altitude (if there are passengers with limited oxygen on board), select a suitable airport and safely land the aircraft. For decades, this was the only option available to us as pilots; there was no magic button to deploy a parachute or land the plane without pilot input.
The advent of the whole aircraft recovery parachute system, developed in the 1970s and made popular as standard equipment on Cirrus aircraft in the late ’90s, was the first step toward a solution that passengers (or pilots) could engage in the event of a loss of control due to incapacitation or airframe structural failure. Introduced in 2019, Garmin’s Autoland system is the culmination of years of research and data that could not only save the occupants but also save the airframe in most scenarios. For six years, owners, operators and pilots waited for the first real-world save from the system, only to have the event clouded by the controversy surrounding whether it should have been allowed to follow through on the entire sequence on its own, without input from two competent, qualified and coherent pilots on board.
Cue the quarterbacking
Did the pilots make the right decision? The answer is yes, absolutely. If their account is factual, they experienced a sudden depressurization and, due to the many variables, allowed an installed safety system to do what it was designed to do.
Did they make the only correct decision? No.
Another thing I love to tell pilots I’m training, usually as they’re pushing buttons to get to a particular screen in an avionics unit, is that there are many ways to skin a cat and they all lead to the same outcome. When I’m loading new information into an FMS, I’m usually looking for the most efficient way with the fewest button pushes. Sometimes I don’t know what that path is and revert to a less efficient method I know works. I get the same result, albeit with a little more effort on my part. In this case, the pilots were faced with a decision: allow an autonomous, already-activated emergency system to do its thing or override it and do what they know to do.
There is no right or wrong decision here (until the FAA tells us otherwise), only a decision to be made under the emergency authority granted to PICs everywhere, under FAR 91.3, to act in the best interests and safety of the flight as they deem appropriate. The crew, in a high-stress, heart-racing, noisy environment (when was the last time you experienced an uncommanded depressurization in an aircraft?), made a conscious, informed decision (using the information available only to them at the time) that ensured a safe outcome for the flight.
Is it what I would do? Probably not. Is it what others would do? Probably so. The determination will depend on the circumstances at the time, whether the conditions are those in which the pilot is comfortable and proficient, and the comfort level with the airframe itself. I know that if I were to have a safe outcome in an emergency, I would hate for my judgment and actions to be second-guessed by others, without them experiencing the same conditions in real time.
Will this make a great case study or training scenario? Absolutely. Will we likely see this exact scenario in the future? I doubt it. I suspect future training, now that we’ve all had time to review the data, will point pilots toward disabling the system and continuing under their own authority and power. In this case, the ability to choose an airport, choose a runway and make appropriate communications that could have alleviated ground-based resources would have been highly beneficial.
Am I on the pilots’ side? One hundred percent, whatever their decision, if it results in the safe outcome of a flight with no unnecessary damage to the airframe due to said decision-making. There is no “standard” emergency, and there is no limit to how creative pilots should be allowed to handle such an emergency. We should all be trained in best practices and solid, proven emergency mitigation techniques, but we should always be allowed to deviate as necessary using the information that only we have as we’re sitting in that cockpit.
