@jcjeant - As I said to Bearfoil/Lyman on the Tech Log threads, be very careful when tangling with ChristiaanJ - on the off-chance you're unaware, the man was a senior engineer on Concorde during development and service and - to coin a phrase - he's likely forgotten more about aircraft design in terms of aerodynamics and the human/machine interface than you or I could ever hope to know, and just from reading his public posts I've learned an absolute shedload.
Apropos of nothing, here's a brief blogpost on the man responsible more than anyone else for the A320's (and by extension her descendants) handling characteristics:
Gordon Corps (1929-1992)
Sentences that should be paid particular attention to include (emphasis mine):
In 1964, after his RAF service he joined the Air Registration Board. He became chief test pilot to the Civil Aviation Authority in 1981 on the retirement of Dave Davies.
(Yes - *that* Dave (D.P.) Davies, the one who wrote what many still consider the Bible of heavy jet handling characteristics nearly 40 years after it's last edition. Prior to that, Captain Corps was effectively Davies' SIC)
He joined Airbus Industrie in Toulouse in 1982 as an engineering test pilot. In the intervening 10 years, he had been involved in flight-testing the Airbus A310, A300-600 and A320 airliner family, with special responsibility for flying qualities.
I hope this helps to lay to rest any remaining belief that the A320 series was designed without the input of pilots, and indeed was designed with the input of at least one of the most skilled and safety-conscious pilots who ever lived.
It was Captain Corps who devised the previously-mentioned simulator test that proved to at least one sceptical pilot that the A320's systems, including bank and pitch limitations, were more than capable of permitting emergency escape maneouvres with a better success rate than conventional control designs.
Captain Corps sadly died of altitude sickness in 1992 when investigating a fatal accident on Talkuassir mountain, which, though tragic, demonstrated his commitment to safety in the air above all else (and frankly what our cousins in the US would call "brass balls") - how many 62-year-old men can you think of who would risk a treacherous journey to the Himalayas just to be the point man for an accident investigation?
From a personal perspective, another tragic consequence of his death, which I've mentioned before, is that the contributions of Captain Bernard Ziegler (who was first and foremost a sales evangelist) to the history of the Airbus FBW project, of which there were many that were controversial, are common knowledge among the piloting community - but the contributions of Captain Corps (who was a technical and engineering pilot with hours logged in more types than many can name off the top of their head, and an acute knowledge of the good and bad points of *all* of them) are nowhere near as well-known. Part of me wonders whether if he had lived long enough to complete his retirement, he'd have written a book which would have picked up where Davies left off, and left no doubt in the minds of the pilots and engineers who read it, that the design considerations of the A320 series were thoroughly thought through and had to get through the approval of this formidable aviator before they would pass muster.