Old Fuddy-Duddy has his two cents' worth,
Ormeside,
Glad to hear from you (when one of our 90+ gang suddenly goes quiet, you tend to suspect the worst !) Agree about the Airbus (and all of that ilk), although my experience in them is limited to serf-class down the back-end of a 320. But from all I hear here, I would shrink back in terror from LL over the sea (or anywhere else, for that matter) in a thing whose natural habitat is FL300 or above, and which (by all accounts), I don't fly, but rather it flies me. I suppose you're only there to reassure the pax (poor deluded souls) that there is some human input into this devil's brew. (REMEMBER: A BLACK BOX HAS NO FEAR OF DEATH).
What would you want a wheel for ? What was the matter with the good old stick ? With unlimited power assistance, you could have it (say) cigarette-size, foldaway, in its proper place from time immemorial, (between your knees), under your lunch tray. Hydraulic power and its back-up fails (whoever heard of such a thing ?), either you put second dickey onto hydraulic handpump and tell him to pump for his life, or entrust your soul to its Maker and your body to Martin-Baker (pity about the pax). No bang seat ? Ah, well.
Instinctly recoil from the side-stick idea, but it seems to work. But wouldn't it have been better to couple the sticks together mechanically (as had always been done since the Wright brothers). How can you instruct when you can't feel what your stude is doing with his pole ? (and I don't want any Rabelaisian comment !).
And it would have avoided the hideous situation in the AF447 tragedy (and I impute blame to no one on board that dreadful night), where it's all going pear-shaped, P3 has the stick pulled hard back into his guts, P1 and P2 are running around desperately in the dark and chaos, and they can't see or (more vitally) feel, what P3's doing. So a perfectly good aircraft, flying happily in the cruise, with only an iced-up pitot head (was pitot-head heater u/s, then ?), and 228 souls on board (RIP all), stalls at FL380, and goes all the way down into a freezing sea, and no one can stop it. (And, but for a miracle of marine salvage, no one would ever know why).
Now I see why the wise men in my Arnold Flight School made me fly my first 60 hours without an ASI (as I'd never been off the ground before, I felt no pain at all). Don't think Orville and Wilbur had one either, and they made out all right at Kittihawk, too.
Rant over, standby for incoming.
Cheers, Danny. (Armchair warrior par excellence).