Wubble:
As I said, it has been some time since I have touched the 'bus... I thought I remembered that the AP would engage at 30ft, whilst the operational limitation was at 100ft... But maybe i'm wrong, having had 3 transition courses since, the various AFM data tends to mix up in my puny little brain...
Apologies if I have emitted wrong data!
From what I remember from our sim sessions, handling the EF with autopilot OFF (90% of the time) was no big problem, except that on take-off, full rudder input would induce oscillation. The most generally practiced way was to level the wings with aileron first, and then slowly apply rudder....
My lasting impression from the Airbus was that while the automation was neat, you could always toggle off most of the stuff and "hand-fly" the beast to your satisfaction, including switching off the flight-control computers until the system was in "basic mode", i.e. where stick deflection actually corresponds to control surface deflection....
I have never touched a Boeing, sadly, but I can imagine it will take a while for any self-respecting Boeing driver to be seduced by the Airbus "philosophy" of doing things. It's interesting though to see that most people who have flown Airbus for more than 1 year are rather satisfied with it...