Airbus had a new concept in mind and thought they would proceed, which they did, whatever the concerns raised by the pilots :
Originally Posted by aguadalte
I had the opportunity to meet Pierre Baud, when I was invited to Toulouse in the early ninety's, to fly one of their A330 testbed aircraft. That was my first experience with a FBW aircraft (before that, only Boeing and A310's) and I personally had the chance to verbalize my worries in this regard (no feed-back on SS, added inputs on SS, lack of need for trimming, ATS in step of Auto-Throttles)
For certain aspects they steped back as for the thrust management system which was initially designed to be operated through pushbuttons only, no thrust lever at all. This was mentioned a few years back by
Chris Scott who was one in the early operation of the 320.
But for the independant sidesticks concept, they were not negociable : The pilots would adapt and they would love it, which is not especially untrue.
As
PJ2 put it : "We get used to it"
Still, I don't understand how they thought the visual information provided to the PNF by a yoke was of no value anymore and therefore not necessary ?
Every rotation phase, flare phase, as a PNF, I am very consious for being deprived of such nice information, just feeling a bit out of the loop. I have well a few anecdotes to make my point, even if to this day they are only anecdotes ... but I am fully aware that further on the road I could be well more seriously reminded how such information was of interest ...
Has one of the reasons behind such thinking by Airbus just been mentioned by
Lyman :
A possibility of course, exists that single pilot operation, contingent on the building of an extensive record of safety thus equipped, might be "just around the corner"?
I think it is a possibility.
As I said earlier, a sidestick for a single crew operation makes a lot of sense, but makes a lot less, IMO, for a multicrew operation.