All~
Having spent the last 10 years flying the Airbus 319/320, I can say this:
It is quiet and comfortable unless it's has the early generation pilot seats. It does a decent job with performance limitations. The airplane itself can be touchy and glitchy. It navigates from behind itself, as do all a/c with this FMS. It takes a simple FMS entry and makes it too complex. The autopilot can be rough if the parameters aren't correct before you turn one on. It will set you up for a problem like no other a/c I've ever flown, so you have to babysit it all of the time. Often something fails only to not even know it did it!
To whit: When we got to the a/c yesterday for our trip home, we had 2 faults on the ECAM. 1) ILS 1 Fault, 2) LAV Smoke Detector. Both were computer resets, just pulling & resetting c/b's for 10-15 sec.(quite the norm for the Airbus) On our arrival while on downwind, SEC 1 (primary spoilers & elevators computer) decided to kick off for no apparent reason. Sure it came back online after the ECAM actions were performed, as do most faults in this a/c. The odd thing is that despite all of the supposed technology in this a/c, not one of those failures recorded in the CFDS fault reporting system even though 2 (LAV Smoke + SEC 1) were hard faults! (annunciated on ECAM & not intermittent)
I don't claim to be the ace of the base on this a/c but after 34 years of flying I think even an old dog like me should be able to fully understand an aircraft system or two. Not this bird though. You just have to learn it's idiosyncrasies, and know that the faults probably aren't real...not the norm on any Boeing product I've flown anyway.
Tailwinds,
Ogee