PTH;
you may think you are hand flying the airbus...but
LOL...a good friend with whom I enjoyed flying the A320 a great deal and who loves the B767, (who wouldn't?), always snapped on the autopilot soon after takeoff with the exclamation, "it'd be different if I were really flying it..."
I always enjoyed the back and forth with my buddy who loved Boeings, (as I do, and for the same reasons) because it was always good-natured and never driven by ideologies! So with a bit of fun in mind,...
The basis for the opinion is of course "fbw", ...that somehow who's flying has no "real" connection with the airplane's controls, can't "feel" the airplane because of auto-trim and doesn't know what the engines are doing because the thrust levers don't move, and, when one needed it most, "the software engineers took away the ability to get the most out of the airplane!"
But, with a bow in
DC-ATE's direction, that's the case with every airliner since the DC8 which was the last real cable and pulley jet airliner. Since then it's been hydraulics, electrics and artificial load feel all the way down. Heck, the DC8 and B707 both had "non-moving" throttles and we never had a problem knowing what the engines were doing. One was constantly adjusting them however, as fuel was burnt and sometimes the throttle-stagger, was....um, staggering, (sorry
...(I'm Canadian)).
So what's the big deal about non-moving thrust levers, hydraulically-powered, electrically-controlled flight controls?
I believe that, as with any airliner, a matter of understanding combined with habit is all that separates an enthusiastic response to the A320/A330 series from the sense that there is a veil between you and the airplane, (which is how I felt the first time I stepped into the cockpit..."where
is everything?"...I asked myself).
Every airliner is a compromise, this airplane being no different; the compromises are exponential to the advancements in an industry unaccustomed to large, all-at-once changes, and Airbus took the industry to places it hadn't been except for military aircraft. Boeing followed suit with the B777 which is indeed fbw but with a few differences, (I know about by-passing the main flight control computers, but it's still fbw after the disconnect) and the brilliant B787, which I sincerely regret that I'll never fly, is entirely based upon carbon, one of the most stable elements in the universe, so it has to be a good'un, eh?
Anyway - in fun, PTH. I wish I still had the chance to hand-fly or even have the choice to engage an autopilot...
PJ2