Originally Posted by
Justapax1
What, as a Boeing engineer, did you make of the A320? I didn't realise it had been around that long, or that it had the range to fly Montreal to Vancouver. Most A320 flights in Europe are short, e.g., London to Brussels or Paris, but reading the Wikipedia article I see that it is capable of much longer-haul flights.
I was really interested in what the pilots thought of it (Air Canada was operating quite a few 767s at the time, which I'd spent the majority of my career working). As noted, they really liked it except for the non-moving thrust levers (which was of particular interest to me as a Propulsion engineer). Moving levers are very fundamental to the Boeing philosophy, I very seriously doubt you'll ever see a Boeing aircraft with human pilots that has non-moving thrust levers (then again, I never thought I'd see Boeing contract out building the wing - yet they did just that on the 787),
Since most of my flight deck experience at the time had been 767s (e.g. EICAS), the A320 didn't look a whole lot different aside from the side stick controllers/no yoke.