The AFDS-770 is a fully digital, fail operational autopilot, flight director, and fly-by-wire backdrive system. The triplex system provides multichannel cruise autopilot and flight director control functions for speed selection, altitude modes, heading/track modes, vertical speed/flight path angle modes, vertical/lateral flight management control selection, and fully automatic landing and go-around modes. The AFDS-770 also provides for backdrive of the captain's and first officer's control columns and control wheels during all phases of the flight envelope, and will also backdrive the rudder pedals during autoland and go-around. The backdrive system provides traditional wheel, column and pedal feedback for the 777 fly-by-wire system under autopilot control.

The AFDS-770 is the standard autopilot flight director system for the Boeing 777 aircraft, incorporating technology advancements consistent with Boeing’s state-of-the-art design objectives . The AFDS-770 communicates with the other major avionic system components via ARINC 629 interfaces. Maintenance and fault isolation information is communicated to the aircraft central maintenance system via a directed maintenance protocol specifically developed for the Boeing 777 aircraft. Each of the AFDC-770 computers contains three verified FCP-2002 microprocessors. Two of these latest generation flight control processors support the high integrity requirements for the backdrive control system while the other provides the data computations to control the automatic pilot and landing functions of flight control computers. Other technology advancements incorporated in the Boeing 777 aircraft autopilot flight director system include backlit LCD readouts on the MCP-770, Neutron Single Event Upset tolerance in the AFDC-770, and HIRF protection in all of the AFDS-770 line replaceable units.

The AFDS-770 autopilot flight director system consists of the following equipment types. Alternate statuses of these equipments may be required in specific future Boeing 777 aircraft models and derivatives. Consult the equipment descriptions in this section and your local Collins representative.