Originally Posted by
SLFinAZ
however I do believe that the very name Airbus is telling....the end goal was to create a flying bus service....and the end result has been a drive to the lowest common denominator of pilot "skill" possible.
Interesting theory, unfortunately the truth is somewhat more prosaic. The term was first used for a BEA (as in British European Airways) specification in the mid-60s that was designed to augment or replace the HS.121 Trident. HS's next design (from DH's old Hatfield office) was the HS.134 - unfortunately it never made it past the drawing board, but here it is (Note the "AIRBUS" spec in the bottom-right corner) :
Also note how similar it is to what eventually became the B757 - despite being a 1967 design! The full story can be found here:
British Airliners 'Nearly Get It Right' Shock!
Anyway - come the '70s it was clear that the separate European manufacturers could not individually compete with the economies of scale that the big US manufacturers could call upon, and so the UK (who later withdrew), Germany, France and Spain decided to collaborate on a project that would be capable of competing. The consortium decided to use the name "Airbus" - in all likelihood because as it happens, the word "bus" is pronounced the same and means the same thing in all the languages used by those European countries (from "Omnibus" - derived from the Latin "for all").
@Chris Scott - BZ would not have been responsible for implementation details such as whether to interconnect controls or not - that would have fallen to the aeronautical and pilot engineering teams to hash out.