Originally Posted by
jcjeant
The question can be also ... why Boeing keep the yoke even on their last aircraft conception ?
Why they don't choice the SS ? .. as it's less weight .. etc ...
In part because it gave them a selling point by taking advantage of the backlash among some following the A320's entry into service. FBW as a concept was already proven, so they could focus on the backdrive software, which was probably more complex than anything Airbus could have attempted back in 1982.
That was all window-dressing really though - where Airbus had and still have an unassailable lead over Boeing is the ease of conversion between types - in which the design of the Airbus FBW flight deck played a crucial role. Because there is more commonality between the Airbus FBW types than could be remotely possible between Boeing's, it didn't make sense for Boeing to try to retrofit all their existing types with 777-based controls. In that sense, Boeing having been around for longer and being responsible for the most popular airliner in the world actually proved a disadvantage.
[EDIT : Just to try and clarify - the debate over Airbus, FBW and automation frequently misses the point in a lot of ways. The A320's automation is not a great deal more advanced than that of the 757 (Boeing's 3rd-gen narrowbody at the time).
The fact is that Airbus found themselves in an almost unique position in the early 1980s. Because their only existing types catered for a specific market, and because that market was near-saturated, it meant that they could expand without encumbering themselves with A300 commonality.
One of the great misunderstandings about Airbus's much-publicised cost savings to airlines with the new FBW types was how the savings were achieved. It wasn't really to do with greater automation, and it definitely wasn't an attempt to de-skill pilots - it was to do with ease of conversion. By designing the flight deck of their narrowbody and new widebody types to have unprecedented commonality with each other, theoretically the cost to airlines of conversion training could be drastically reduced. Boeing had made inroads on this theory by designing the 757 and 767's flight decks to be very close functionally, but Boeing still had the legacy types (727, 737, 747) to contend with. Airbus had a relatively clean run at doing it across their entire range, with the exception of the A300/310 (which had nowhere near the market penetration of the older Boeing types).
As such, the fundamental design brief was to put together a flight deck that could be installed in anything from a twin-engined puddle-jumper to a four-engined widebody long-hauler and as near as possible have the only difference to the pilot be the reference numbers. Obviously if you're feeding back the control surface resistance to the stick that's not possible - so with the help of some of the best pilots in Europe they set about making a design which would feed back all the information available in a more traditional setup, but would fulfil the design brief. Some compromises had to be made, but the position Airbus enjoys now is a testament to the soundness of the design they came up with. ]