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Aviation History
1997
1997 - 2909.PDF
Sis f33l/^ A3iy flight test PETER HENLTY/HAMBURG The 124-seat A319 is the smallest of the Airbus Industrie family of airliners, featur ing the same basic flightdeck and similar handling characteristics to all the other Airbus fly-by-wire (FBW) aircraft. A "shrink" derivative of the 150-seat A320, the A319 is offered with the same engines as the larger model, but both die CFM International (CFMI) CFM56-5A and International Aero Engines (IAE) V2500-A5 options are flat-rated to 98kN (22,0001b) thrust in their basic specifi cation, with a 105kN option. The commonality happily extends to the A319 cockpit which is identical to that of the A320 and A321, and the three have a common pilot type-rating. Indeed the cockpit is the same for the widebody A3 30 and A340 except that the latter has four power levers and system-manage ment panels allied to the four engines. Pilots can therefore readily be cross-qualified between a widebody and narrowbody Airbus. The Airbus rationale behind using an elec tronic flight-control system is that it provides capabilities which conventional systems could not. Airbus claims safety improvements in pro tection against inadvertent overstressing of the airframe, over-speed, stalling, and windshear. Just as importantly, it allows crews to demand maximum performance from the aircraft with out fear of stalling or exceedances in sudden emergencies. Fly-by-wire, says Airbus, improves handling and allows a better-designed working environment. Such radical thinking has a marked impact. The pilot of an FBW Airbus controls the aircraft through a sidestick mounted on a side console outboard of each seat. The control-surface response is not directly proportional to stick movement as it would be with a conventional system. Differences such as these have inevitably begged questions about the "user-friendliness" of an FBW Airbus. Whynot, as Boeing has done with the 777, use an FBW system which looks and feels like the one pilots are used to? How dif ficult would it be for a pilot out of flying-training school to adapt to a different concept? In the reverse case, how would an FBW-Airbus-rated first officer face up to flying, say, a Boeing 767, with its conventional yokes, etc, on promotion to captain? There are now probably more than 5,000 Airbus-qualified pilots worldwide, but there is still some apprehension, fascination and mysti cism about flying the computer-dominated Airbus. Since I had no FBW experience other than some time which chief test pilot William Wainwright had found for me in his busy sched ule to introduce me to the concepts ona •)• A FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL SUPPLEMENT
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