Comment Re:The article is missing some info (Score 4, Informative) 39
What you're thinking of in commercial airliners is something called a category 3 ILS / Autoland, which is where the autopilot can follow a radio beacon to the runway and in some cases, land itself. However it requires a significant amount of knowledge and set-up from the pilots, all sorts of special training and only works at very major commercial airports. Further, the pilots still have to do most of the pre-landing operations like adjusting speed, flaps settings, gear down, lights, etc.
The Garmin Autoland system is much more automated. It is literally just a big red Autoland button that either a pilot or passenger could push. Once pressed, the system takes full control of plane, selects the landing site, plots the course, flies the approach, makes emergency announcements to both ATC and to the passengers onboard, fully configures the plane for landing, lands and applies brakes to stop on the runway. It can operate at any airport that has GPS approach options, which is thousands more runways than could accept an airliner cat 3 autoland.
It is a pretty big leap forward in aviation tech.