Plain English Meaning

Equipment in the aircraft that flies, navigates, or calculates for the pilot once it has been set up. The pilot tells it what to do; the system does it and the pilot watches to make sure it is doing it correctly.

Full Definition

In aviation, an automated system is onboard equipment that performs flight or navigation tasks on the pilot's behalf, such as an autopilot, flight management system (FMS), autothrottle, or moving-map GPS. The pilot programs and monitors the system, but the system executes the moment-to-moment control or computation.

Context Anchor

Seen in discussions of cockpit automation, autopilot use, pilot attention, and the of becoming too focused on or too trusting of equipment.