Comment Re:This could have ended badly (Score 1) 39
All pilots should be listening to Guard, CTAF, and UNICOM frequencies, in addition to whatever ATC tells them to use to communicate with the tower.
If the autoland software is broadcasting its plans on those channels, it's almost impossible for another pilot to not know what's going on.
There's always a chance that a nearby aircraft could have radio problems, but the pilot of that plane should be exercising extreme caution. And you're supposed to set your transponder to a special value during radio failure, so everyone else knows that you might behave unpredictably. Presumably, the autolander could watch for this as well, although I have no idea if it does. Not every plane has a transponder, but the vast majority do.
Most of the hypothetical interactions are covered by existing regulations.