Originally Posted by
Welsh Wingman
...but I do believe that AB should never have been marketed as more automation implicitly equals less crew training costs (which their salesmen, at least, did).
Actually I'm pretty sure that's an oversimplification. In the early days, Airbus's sales crew did emphasise how simple the automation made flying the aircraft. But I don't think that "lower training costs" sales angle referred to the automation. As I said before, Airbus's ace-up-the-sleeve with training costs is and has always been that the similarity of the flight-deck layout on the A320 up to the A340 (and the A380, despite having more advanced systems in some respects, the general layout is still nigh-on identical) means that conversion training between types is considerably easier and more straightforward than most of their competitors.
I'm not saying they weren't overconfident in the ability of the automatics to handle everything, as well as the ease with which pilots would take to the new systems in the very early days (1988-1994 in particular) - but I've long suspected that reports of "more automation = less training" was two distinct aspects of the new design lost in translation via the press.