Originally Posted by
Diverskii
To this day I still cannot figure out why Airbus would design them like that.
Having the two sidesticks linked would require either a direct mechanical connection OR a motor on each stick to drive it to the offside position.
Direct mechanical linkage would be difficult to engineer, given the positions of the sidesticks on opposite sides of the cockpit, and would create a risk of a jam in one stick (or anywhere along the linkage path, which would be complex in nature) jamming both sticks. So you'd need to be able to disconnect them anyway - JUST LIKE IN A BOEING.
A motorized backdrive would create the same jam one, jam both scenario, and it would also introduce failure cases of the more complex motor drive system.
The unlinked controls are perhaps different to what was once the conventional approach, but that alone doesn't make it wrong.