An Airbus A330.
May 10, 2025
AFTER SEVENTEEN YEARS of flying the Boeing 757 and 767 — plus several earlier years on an assortment of other types — I’ve switched over to the Airbus.
The transition wasn’t easy, entailing more than a month of study and simulators, with a series of tests and evaluations along the way. For those of you who buy into the old “jetliners just fly themselves” mantra, five weeks of A330 training might change your mind.
You may already know that Boeing and Airbus operate quite differently, each with its own platform of control, automation, and flight management. You’ll be expecting me to expound on the challenges of learning to use a side-stick control rather than a yoke, for instance, and understanding the Airbus’s unique “flight control laws,” and so on. As it happens, I don’t have much to say on those things. Stick versus wheel… sure, it’s different, but the adjustment is quick.
What you might be surprised to hear me say, however, is that I find the Airbus a less sophisticated machine than the Boeings I’d been flying, even though its baseline technology is newer (early 1980s versus late 1980s). Conventional wisdom holds the Airbus in higher technological esteem, but to me the pilot-machine interface a more cumbersome one. Things that took one or two button-pushes in the Boeing might take four in the Airbus, and there were several moments during training that began with, “What do you mean it can’t….”
This by no means makes the plane less safe. The things I’m talking about are stylistic, idiosyncratic. There’s a grace that’s missing. If Boeing is Apple, Airbus is most certainly Microsoft. They both get the job done safely, but one has more style.
Among the A330’s attributes, none is more impressive than its ability to take off and land at remarkably low speeds. It owes this to a huge and beautifully sculpted wing (its span is broader than a 747’s) that is able to excel both at high-speed efficiency and low-speed docility. At typical weights, the jet is off the ground by 150 knots and touching down at 135 or so. For a plane of its size that’s amazing.
Neither is it bad looking. I’m always bemoaning the bland aesthetics modern jetliners, but I have to say, the A330 is a sexy exception, the -900 variant especially.
But truth be told, so much of what enamors pilots to their planes is creature comfort. And on that count, I’ll take the Airbus over the 757/767 any day. The cockpit is roomy and quiet. There’s a downstairs bunk room to rest in on long-haul flights, and instead of a clunky control wheel in front of me, I’ve got a table to write on.
I expect I’ll grow to like it.
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Upper photo by the author.
Cockpit photo courtesy of Andres Dallimonti and Unsplash.
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