alt Hacker NewsEven without autoland, I've never understood why there wasn't an emergency system to handle depressurization events when it detects no pilot input. There have been enough ghost flights, even in the last 20 years, that such a system could've saved hundreds of lives. (Helios Air 552) Automatically dropping altitude, or even just changing the transponder to some automatic value, would help.
I guess in some cases lowering altitude could result in flight into terrain or possibly entering airspace where collision with other aircraft would be more likely ?