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....