Whats the A320 conversion like?

[ATIS]

Am very soon about to start my A320 conversion course, having never flown FBW a/c, would any of you like to enlighten me as to how your conversions went. Any gotchas that I should be wary about.

Any good/bad points about the a/c.

All advice would be grateful

[oldebloke]

Lots of gotcha's-don't worry about them..experience them like the rest of us(was on the 320 ten years)...
Initial course a hosepipe of information,will relax about six months on the line...
Side stick comes easily(you only use one side of the wheel now)..
Learn the magic(what does what),the airplane handles very well with no magic applied(auto thrust included)..
Have fun..
Cheers:ok:

[filejw]

I did a pretty good review of the normal A/C systems before I went to class.The things like ele, hdy, fuel, air cond.Anything to give me a leg up time wise.This gave me more time in school for the things that were new to me.I ended drinking a little more beer than some of my classmates as I was not under pressure to study and read from sun up to midnite .It was my first glass, I came off the 727 and was 48 at the time.:E

[catchup]

My deepest respect!

regards

[Sawbones]

I'm approaching 2 years now on the 319/320/321 after many years on the 737. I agree with a previous poster that you should try and get the systems work done beforehand. Our Company had a very good home study programme on disc for us.

With that out of the way, you will have more time and mental energy to devote to the FBW/glass business. At first loading the MCDU seems to take for ever, but with practice, you'll be amazed how it all falls into place. In no time at all you'll love the displays in front of you on the PFD (primary flight display) and the ND (nav display). Did I say that learning the 'bus acronyms is important as well!

Our airline has a policy of always "calling the boxes." These are the annunciations you will see on the FMA "flight mode annunciator" at the top of your PFD. This will alert you to what the aircraft is doing, ie: capturing an altitude, intercepting a glide slope, etc. You may think that you have "instructed" the aircraft to do something by your knob-twiddling manipulations on the FCU (flight control unit), but until you see the appropriate annunciation, don't believe that it will happen. Good practice is to look for the altitude selection knob, for example, (later you won't have to look as hard) but then divert your eyes to the FMA to be sure that what you've selected is correct. Should help you avoid a lot of early mistakes.

Otherwise, remember it's still just an airplane and old techniques still come into play.

And oh yes, you "pull" to gain pilot control, and "push" to give control to the aircraft. After a day on course you'll know what I mean.

Good luck.

Sawbones

[AIRWAY]

Hello,

Check the transair website, they have some interesting books regarding the A320, one of them being the A320 personal instructor it will make good reading before you start the transition.

Regards,
Airway
:8

[ATIS]

Thanks very much guys for your help. I am about to order two manuals from Transair to help with the prep.

Can't wait to fly it.

[EFP058]

And oh yes, you "pull" to gain pilot control, and "push" to give control to the aircraft. After a day on course you'll know what I mean.
A good way to memorize this during the first couple days: Pull the knob away from the aircraft (panel) and towards the pilot to give control to the pilot; push the knob away from the pilot and to the aircraft (panel) to give control to the aircraft.

After a day or two it´ll be second nature.

[sidestick stirrer]

I agree; my training was to consider pushing or pulling the various knobs on the glareshield FCU as: pulling towards me=I've got it, and pushing it away from me=you've( the guidance computer) got it.

Takes a while to get used to the fact that when hand-flying( called stirring the stick for the first few sim sessions), the autopilot is still actually flying the aircraft, it's just in what we used to know as CWS-control wheel steering. It will work hard for you to keep the airplane in the attitude it was in when you last put the sidestick in neutral( no pitch or bank requests).
With this system, you can comfortably hand-fly down the ILS in turbulent conditions with minimal inputs, but rest assured the elevators and ailerons are wiggling mightily to satisfy you.

Perhaps the biggest adjustment for some is the non-moving throttles when the autothrottle is active. Opening the throttles to either of the two takeoff settings arms the autothrottle, and reducing power to the climb detent( not setting) will activate them. From then on, the position of the throttle(s) just limits the maximum thrust that the autothrust can get from that engine. For that reason, they're left in the climb detent.
Makes for an adjustment when landing manually: they're in Speed mode on approach of course, maintaining Vapp, and, when we flare, the speed starts to bleed off as we ease the throttles back. The problem is that the engines are not at the same setting that the throttles are( they're way up at climb, remember) so we start bringing them back, having no effect on throttling them whatsoever at this point ; they're busy trying to maintain airspeed, which is decaying, so they're increasing power, which raises the nose, which increases the airspeed decay, and around in a circle everything goes until the throttles reach the spot where the engines actually are and they begin to spool down.
I also agree that the biggest changes seem to involve Airbus logic ( now there's an oxymoron if ever there was one), the enormous amount of data on the PFD, and finding one's way around the MCDU.
I think there's 157 bits of information presented on the PFD at any one time, and at first it's so overwhelming that one does not have an instrument scan, it's just a stare. In fact, level, unaccelerated flight involves just a straight sweep of the eyes from left to right across the middle of the instrument:ASI target, actual airspeed and trend, attitude and heading, present altitude and target altitude, vertical speed.
Personally, I found the airspeed display counter-intuitive, in that the tape with the numbers moves down while accelerating. It does mean that the numbers passing under the lubber line are increasing, but it sure seemed like we were slowing down for awhile. Imagine an old, round-dial ASI in which the pointer stands still and the dial rotates; the dial would be rotating CCW to indicate an increasing airspeed, but to us it appears to be unwinding.
AS for the MCDU, it's like learning to swim, you just have to dive in and do it. In the beginning, it's very much "poke and pray", but quickly you'll find a pattern to run around the buttons (2-turn left spin for pre-flight, lazy "L" for pre-descent) and by the time you know what page you're looking for but not quite where it is, you are almost there. When you screw up and the airplane charges off for places unknown and you exclaim, " Where's it going now?", rest assured that you are not alone nor the first to ask that, by a long shot. You're just an Airbus pilot.
The last item would be the ECAM discipline, which must be strictly followed to make the airplane as safe as a three-pilot cockpit, but I'm sure your instructor will stress this.
However, one's first Airbus is generally considered the most-demanding( not insurmountable) conversion course one will face. Several times you will ask yourself why moving people and freight from A to B had to become so complicated. I had perfect eyesight and 25 years/10,000+ hours of line flying when I started mine, and I finished three months later with reading glasses and my instructor was hoarse from shouting at me
Your mileage may vary, of course.
In the end, when you get some line flying under your belt, you will begin to appreciate Airbus's new product. Neat little things, like putting the VS needle on the top of the altitude target box as it slides down the altitude tape gives a great leveloff and the GSmini is a Godsend:last fall, while descending on the ILS following a -400 into NRT with winds of 45G60, we could see his ailerons and elevators flapping away in the sunshine three miles ahead, but he broke it off and went around due to airspeed loss.
We were enjoying a smooth ride with that sidestick in the middle, and, having told the guidance computer what the surface wind was, it figured out what our groundspeed would be over the fence and the autothrottles would not let our speed get less than that. So, yes, we were, at that point, 25-30 knots over Vapp, but the airplane was protecting itself against the speed loss that was coming up.
But I digress.
In hindsight, I didn't like the 320. To me, coming off the 67 and 1011, it felt light and cheaply-made, buzzing and vibrating and rattling, and had so little wing I felt like I was back on the 27. And, being an all-electric machine, it was a crap-shoot whenever the external power, APU or engine generator was brought on or off line, chances were 50-50 that some nuisance thing would fail, like the pressurization, nosewheel steering, a flight-control computer, the fuel computers, the anti-skid, temperature control, smoke detection, etc. Most of these we could reset ourselves, but occasionally we would have to shut everything down and sit with our passengers in the dark for two minutes while all the residual electrical charges bled out of the components and then power everything back up and start over.
Oh, and you'll only ever shut down an engine in a turn on the ground once; the NWS computer loses its command signal from the tiller for just a split second, and, if the circumstances are just right, it will momentarily centre the nosewheel in a flash and smack the sidewindow into the Captain's head. Like I said, I only did that once!
Now the wide-body Airbuses, there's a real nice machine. Like a slo-mo 320, I tell my students. Quiet, powerful, stable, lots of wing, very stately and regal in its manoeuvring. So quiet on takeoff the loudest noise in the cockpit is the rising-pitch hum of the nosetires on the runway grooving. Sure, the -400s outclimb us, but, once we both get up there over the ocean, look at the comparative sizes of our contrails. And it has NBPT: no-break power transfer, with nary a flicker of light or screen as generators come and go.
I'm sorry, my first-ever post and I've bored everyone to tears!
My apologies, and I'll disappear to pick up the girls from the hockey game. So cold here that the flames I'm sure to have generated will be most welcome....

[EFP058]

Interesting post, Sidestick Stirrer, and welcome to PPruNe!

Personally, I found the airspeed display counter-intuitive, in that the tape with the numbers moves down while accelerating. It does mean that the numbers passing under the lubber line are increasing, but it sure seemed like we were slowing down for awhile.
Interestingly enough, I always thought this to be the most perfectly logical way to display the airspeed. Hearing the description of the numbers moving down DOES sound a little odd, but once you actually sit in the machine and see how it works for yourself, it all makes sense.

Well, for me anyway. ;)

EDIT: Just out of curiosity (having never flown them myself): Don´t the ASIs of the 737NGs, 747-400, 777 and so on work the same way?

[The African Dude]

sidestick stirrer, great post!

on topic of the AS disp too.. I had a go on a bus sim once and it did seem logical to "climb up" the speed ladder -i.e. numbers moving down as you go up. But it depends on experience of the kind of older ASI you mentioned I suppose, previous training. &c. (mine is limited! :} )

[wondering]

Try www.airbusdriver.net

[Capt. Glenn Quagmire]

Sidestick Stirrer

How would you compare the dispalysbetween the A320/330/340 and the 767 you previously flew in an emergency? While the 767 is older technology do you feel that sometimes the "semi-glassed" layout proves that less is more i.e. not so cluttered.

Without turning it into a A vs B what features would you take from each if you were designing a flight deck?

Welcome to PPrune

[sidestick stirrer]

Gentlemen:
Thank you for your kind words of welcome.
In reply to the two questions posted above, I don't know anything about the 37NG, the 777 or the -400, my experience was solely with the first-generation 767's semi-glass cockpit.
I thought the whole 767 airplane was the high-water mark in the man-machine relationship.
The switchology was excellent; the cockpit check mostly consisted of turning every knob from off to auto and every switchlight was pushed to get rid of its white light; not much to dislike there.
I liked the seating posture: high, erect, with a good view over the nose and the panel well down and forward. Initially, this seemed odd, but I appreciated it when I could see right to the bottom of the panel over the control column.
The glass panels were a bit of a disappointment, in that they pretty well were electronic displays of conventional instruments.
in hindsight, this made them very easy to adapt to.
The EADI seemed absolutely spartan compared to the PFD on the Airbus, but one really great thing about the display-that I didn't notice for about a hundred hours- was the display relationship between the fast-slow pointer on the left side of the attitude and the glideslope pointer on the other side: if both pointers were up, then we were low and fast, and just a pitch adjustment was required, no power, and, conversely, if they were both down, then we were slow and high, and just needed a slight lowering of the nose.
The lower panel, whose acronym I've forgotten, likewise seemed to have very little information, initially it seemed like less than presented on an HSI.
Quickly I learned to love the "track up", and immediately discarded heading information, and feel that is definitely the way to go. Really, who cares what the heading is, when it's just a guess to get a desired ground track? If we already can display the present track.....
Having the relative wind arrow right beside the display was such a great idea that Airbus does the same thing.
I thought the two best things about that lower display-and I miss them both on the Airbus-were the turn noodle and the predictor arc.
The Airbus has a total-energy arc, which is an entirely different prediction.
Boeing made very few mistakes on the 767,even the first ones as I recall. The enormous size and swing of the cabin door handles was a surprize, one usually stood in the way only once.
The sliding cockpit window was an accident waiting to happen, and, sure enough, it caused at least one reject that I'm familiar with.
And it feels so solid, a bit like driving a tank must feel( my experience is limited to half-an-hour at the controls of an APC)
Too bad it was heavy and expensive compared to the competition.
In summary, I would not regret having to go back on it.
I felt it was the greatest airplane when I checked out as an F/O in '83, and still felt that way when I came to it again as a Captain almost ten years later. Even though ours were getting a little long in the tooth by the time of my second visit, they still did what we asked of them without complaint.

[sidestick stirrer]

ATIS:

I wonder what airplane type you're coming off, as this could have some bearing on the workload you'd have in the course.
If you have some experience with an FMS or FMGC, it would greatly ease the task, like about 30% I would guess.There may well be FMS trainers available on the internet.
I have had several candidates who came off either the 737 or back from the -400 ( after it was removed from our crewbase) and the difference in their experiences with the conversion course is telling:

the -400 pilots thought the Airbus had some great features, like the aforementioned GSmini,but the biggest thrill for them was how quiet the cockpit was in cruise. Admittedly, we usually cruise at M.81-.83, whereas the -400 does .85-86, and it has a standing shockwave on the fuselage top at the point of its largest cross-section, which happens to be the cockpit. And the cockpit windows,especially the side windows, are very,very close to one's ear. They were, to a man, noticeably hard of hearing, and had been wearing active-noise-cancelling, circumaural headsets on the -400.
They couldn't believe that we could shed our tiny earmoulds in cruise, and just use the speakers, and turned way down at that.

the pilots off the 737,some with over twenty straight years on it, were easy to recognize: they had the classic, 1000-yard stare, as if they were in shell-shock by the time they got to me. Hands-and-feet skills: excellent, they sure could drive. Automation, heavy-duty programming and flight managing was another world to them and they struggled to keep their heads above water while "drinking from the proverbial firehose". When they were on course, there was no extra sim practice time available for the rest of us: they were in there every minute they could wrangle- silent hours, weekends, whatever it took.

And it worked. A methodical, building-block approach to the automation greatly smoothed the transition. One's first exposure to the FMS and EFIS actually comes just sitting in a classroom in front of two screens with a MCDU keyboard, there's nothing else to distract or keep an eye on. And the screens will simulate an entire fllight, over and over and over.
Learning the acronyms almost demands its own course, and it reaches it crescendo in the Flight Controls chapter.
I was trying to get some laughs from my course colleagues by describing how all I could manage during my first, full-flight sim was try to decide how fast I was going, then try to figure out how fast I was supposed to be going quickly enough to not forget how fast I was going...well, you get the idea.
Surprizingly, someone in the group topped me by not understanding ANYTHING on his PFD, but he didn't want his instructor to know, so he faced the PFD but actually flew the first four hours just looking out the corner of his eyes at the old-fashioned, comfortably-steam-driven standby instruments!

I hope I haven't scared you, that was not my intent. When the airplane isn't doing what you want, for whatever reason, just disconnect everything and handfly it while your erstwhile colleage reprograms the damn thing and then plug the autopilot and autothrottles back in, if you want.
And when you're uncomfortable with the fly-by-wire progressively failing from full envelope protection, through the various partial-protection modes, to no-protection, to ( gasp) direct law-wherein, when you move the sidestick, the control surfaces actually move as much as YOU want- remember, that's the mode that all airliners were flown in for decades before the new Airbuses came along. You're not in any greater peril than they were.
Let me be the first to welcome you to the world of magenta coffins, fuzzy dice, hooks and hockey sticks, iron crosses, donuts, cobwebs, Beta bars, tombstones, thridle opdes, alpha floors,yo-yo's,birds and moustaches, managed and selected alpha locks, constraints( in three colours),rose nav,trend arrows,alpha-prot,memos,TOGA,1+F,and switches that work in reverse on the upper panel!
you'll never say blue or red again; it will be cyan and magenta from here on.....

[ATIS]

sidestick stirrer thanks for the advice. I'm not scared nooooooo, I'm petrified. Only joking. I'm coming off the Bae 146. I can just picture you now falling off your chair and laughing. I am going to prepare as much as I possibly can before the course starts.

Few web sites about that give a good intro to the technology

[sidestick stirrer]

ATIS:

No, I'm not laughing. But, recalling what the course is like, I might be feeling just a little sorry for you for the next few months.

Bottom line on the systems: in general, when you move a switch, the end result is the same, the thing either turns on or off as requested. The difference is the logic in the circuit, which will be unlike anything you've ever encountered. Sometimes the thought that they only did it this way 'cause Boeing did it the other way will pop into your mind. You may very well be right...

Perhaps the best prep would be one of those coil-bound, handbook size, brush-up books available from the larger pilot-supply store, intended for use before a recurrent simride. They give a 10,000' view of the systems and the panel layouts. You probably have one on that un-sanforized Starlifter that you're flying now.

Expect a lot of information, a couple of plateaus in learning, bouts of frustration with the MCDU, and a completely-different way of getting from A to B.

The challenge of a conversion course is supposed to be good for the brain, but this one stands out as being a little over the top.

When you begin to wonder if you can ever grasp all this, just look at someone whom you don't think is very bright who has preceded you onto the line. If they can do it, so can you.

And, if your carrier has wide-body Airbuses, you'll appreciate this course as the course for them, if you're coming off Airbus, is quite short and easy.

[Ka8 Flyer]

Sidestick stirrer

did you get my private message?

Cheers,

Mark

[dghob]

Sidestick Stirrer - some very interesting insights thank you. In your first response you mention the relative size of contrails formed by (presumably) A330/340 compared with -400. Can you explain the differences and the cause pls.
Thanks
dghob

[sidestick stirrer]

DGHOB:

We usually consider the amount of water vapour( hence the contrail) indicative of the amount of combustion going on in the engine.
While I realize that it is related to the relative humidity of the air at altitude, it is still valid when comparing the amount of water vapour issuing from our engines vs. the -400's, when we're both in the same airmass.

It became apparent, right on my first takeoff and climb in the 340, that Airbus uses the reverse philosophy of Boeing, i.e. just enough thrust to get off the ground and lots of wing for cruising, while Boeing uses lots of thrust and just enough wing, at least in some of their designs. They may have been designed differently, but that is sure how they seem to fly.

The last chapter in the 340 AOM has some propaganda comparing the lifting capability of the 400 vs. the 340. While the 400 can lift more, and lift it to altitude quicker, once the 340 gets up to altitude, the much-lower fuelflow more than makes up for the sluggish climb.

[dghob]

Sidestick Stirrer - thanks for that. I wonder if 7E7 will change things for Boeing in that regard.
dghob

[sidestick stirrer]

I would think it will be a real winner for them, considering the description and picture of the one fuselage section already built.
Looks like they've taken a page from Airbus's "build it light" book, and improved on that.
No doubt it will be a wonderful cockpit and a delight to fly, just like the 67.
Keep our fingers crossed that the cost will be competitive...