I have flown the Airbus for a bit now, and I quite enjoy it. However, what really strikes me is that most pilots I meet are really over enthusiastic about it, almost like they have been brainwashed during their airbus convertion. I suspect those (and I have met quite a few) who sincerely think the airbus design is absolutely perfect do not understand it fully, and are not aware of the pitfalls.
Airbus has come up with some great ideas: alpha floor, high and low speed protections for example can be life savers in case of windshear or GPWS. This is a major improvement on safety, and I am surprised Boeing have not implemented it yet. Also the Airbus working environment is really excellent, especially compared with the 737. Simply put, the airbus is, in most cases, quite relaxing to fly. although, like any aircraft, it is challenging to fly it near the crosswind limit in gusty conditions, although I have met people who claim it is easy (the same people who think airbus is perfect, btw).
There is lots of room for improvement however, and I will start with the ECAM. I feel it isn't as user-friendly as it should be. It requires lots of discipline to handle correctly, and can be a nuisance at times. It can also send you down the wrong path. The QRH is quite confusing as well, and not very well thought out, with a mix of TR's, procedures that may or may not be ECAM eg, the smoke drill which is both ECAM and QRH, which I feel is difficult to handle, especially in this kind of stressful situation!
I'm not a traditionalist, but I do agree that the thrust levers should be driven back. Those who claim that we shouldn't use other senses than our sight have probably forgottent what was said during their Human Factors class for their ATPL. How our body collects information about its position in space is called proprioception, and a good deal of our situation awareness comes from it. Having fixed throttles as opposed to backdriven ones removes some of our proprioception, therefore reduces our situation awareness. Same thing goes for the sidesticks. Also one must understand that in the original airbus design, thrust levers were replaced by a switch to set the thrust rating. The only concession airbus made to that design was to replace the little switch by two dinky thrust levers which act exactly as a thrust rating switch.The ideology behind all this is to remove pilots from the loop, which I feel is dangerous. Did you know that the pitch trim wheel in the a380 had been replaced by a switch on the pedestal? So now we won't know what the pitch trim is doing either. I fail to understand how this will make the aircraft any safer!
To conclude all I can say is that the airbus is a great aircraft, although it isn't really exciting to fly (but we are not paid to get excited are we?). The main danger in my opinion is that it makes you lazy, and everytime I try to be keen and pick up the FCOM, all I find is a piece of over-simplified badly translated-from-french bullsh*t!
