This varies between airlines and, with the current situation, many airlines might change requirements, so it is hard to guess at what might get you where. Your career path might vary depending on which aircraft type you opt to start on, but it is unlikely it will permanently cement your career in one direction.
I started flying the Avro RJ85, and never touched an Airbus until I was employed on the A that was a steep learning curve, believe me. Now I fly the A I have colleagues who flew the A and then moved straight onto a , and I have other colleagues who started on the , gained command, then moved as a direct entry captain on an A with another airline So, what am I getting at? Choose based on the airline - the lifestyle, work life balance, career progression and package that they offer.
Do some research, chat to other pilots working there and ask what their experiences have been. Make a decision that way. Yes, they might mean a quicker path to long haul, but long haul is not for everyone - flying regional aircraft, operating turboprops, flight instruction, general aviation Both Boeing and Airbus are great aircraft to fly, but they are not the only options, and depending on your preferences they might not even be the best options.
So, take the opportunities as they come, work hard to forge your own career path and always stay open to change.
Once you have a wealth of experience across many types of aircraft, then and only then will you really be able to say which you prefer and why.
So, when it comes down to the age-old question because Boeing and Airbus pilots do seem to go on about this a lot , my answer is that both are great. Neither is best. The twin-engine Boeing goes back over 50 years, with a first flight in It was a descendant of two early Boeing planes, the four-engine and the tri-jet. Boeing, too, has continuously updated the Pilots got four generations of cockpits, all which maintained some attributes of the original airplane.
Over 10, s have been delivered to airlines. The aircraft has been stretched and upgraded over the years, the latest being the MAX series with the latest CFM International turbofans and distinctive winglets. They are so different that the first , the model, was 94 ft long and had a maximum takeoff weight of , lbs — but the latest, the MAX 10, stretches to ft and can weigh up to , lbs. He should know. Early in his airline career, Kay flew the Boeing and the s that entered service in the late s, now known as Classic.
He went on to be First Officer on the larger Boeing and the twin-aisle , before making captain on the Airbus A, which he flew for years. With over 24, hours in the air, Kay is a training and check pilot on the and and will soon move to captaining the Boeing , the biggest passenger plane flying for any US airline. In a fly-by-wire FBW aircraft like the A, the movements of the side-stick are interpreted by the computers driving the control surfaces.
The cockpit of an Airbus A neo. That can be critical when pilots are faced with an emergency escape maneuver, perhaps due to traffic, wind shear or terrain. This tragic accident renewed discussions about the lack of feedback or interconnect between the two sides of the cockpit in aircraft equipped with this system.
The Airbus and Boeing philosophies on engine throttle systems diverge, too. On an Airbus, pilots adjust the throttles incrementally to taxi and set the levers that sit between the two pilots to command a computer-assigned level of take-off thrust.
Airbus calls this an auto-thrust system, whereas Boeing designs its jets with an autothrottle. And the windows are huge — I really like that. It would be mostly Airbus design, but with a traditional control wheel and back-driven autothrottles. Embraer did just that when it developed its own fly-by-wire philosophy for its business jets and newest commercial airliners. The Brazilian company studied the lessons of both Boeing and Airbus cockpits, taking the best attributes of both. And the Airbus A, originally the Bombardier C Series, has side-sticks , but along with back-driven thrust levers.
As Airbus developed its newest aircraft, including the A, A and A, it maintained a consistent flight-deck philosophy that allows pilots to transition between aircraft easily.
However, with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic having hit the industry hard, both Airbus and Boeing will have struggled in nonetheless. One can draw many parallels between the fleets of commercial aircraft that Airbus and Boeing produce. This is perhaps to be expected, after all, as they compete in the same sub-markets within the airline industry as a whole. In some instances, one can even find points of comparison between two aircraft from the same manufacturer. Simple Flying has covered such discourses extensively in previous articles, a selection of which can be found at the following links:.
At the end of the day, both manufacturers invest millions in technology and engineering. The end goal in both instances is to build the best and safest flying transportation possible.
This is how the two companies have come to constitute such a powerful duopoly in commercial aircraft manufacturing. With that in mind, one might be hard-pressed to choose between the two. That being said, more often than not, Boeing is lauded for its firsts. For example, it was the first manufacturer to build a plane out of composite materials. Boeing is perhaps best known for being the first manufacturer to produce a double-decker aircraft. As far as pilots are concerned, it has been said that the yoke on Boeing aircraft gives a better sense of what the plane is experiencing.
However, the controls on Airbus are said to be more high-tech. As a result, the increased level of automation in the cockpit helps to eliminate the human error factor in safety. Some would even go as far as to say that Airbus merely waited and watched Boeing produce the and before developing its own competitors. One might also draw similar parallels when looking at the Airbus A and A After all, both of these aircraft are competitors to the Boeing and respectively.
However, and crucially, they were both developed after their American counterparts. Nonetheless, the aircraft in question do still differ in many ways. As such, it would perhaps be cynical to state that Airbus outright copied Boeing in this respect.
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