what does autopilot actually do?
In: Engineering
In general, the autopilot keeps the plane at a set altitude, speed, and direction based on what’s put into the GPS. When flying and once you’re at a cruising altitude, there’s a lot of minor adjustments you need to make to keep yourself going in the right direction at the right hight and speed, and it’ll take care of all those adjustments so you can focus on other minor tasks or take a second to appreciate the view. It’s not used (as far as I know) for taking off, ascending to cruising altitude, descending from cruising altitude, making large turns (which you might do if you change destinations or are circling something) or landing, and it’s turned off (in my experience) for all of those.
Edit: As someone pointed out in the comments, commercial (as in large aircraft) airliners having more complex autopilot computers which can take on more tasks than what I described. This answer is best applicable to smaller aircraft like Cessna models which you’d see private owners use
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