Airbus Jetliners Ranked 

"facw" (facw) 05/09/2017 at 22:14 • Filed to: Planelopnik, Airbus, A340, Planes Ranked, i get bored

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My previous !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! was fun to put together, and the discussion was amusing, even if many people were wrong about the 777, so I’ve decided to do a series of these and maybe even merge them into a big list at the end. Today, we’ll look at planes from Airbus.

Things are a little more complicated here as while Boeing has designated their planes by family, Airbus, and frankly most other manufacturers use much more targeted model numbers. I don’t really want to be telling you which members of the A320 family are best, so I’m just going to group similar models. These groupings are still a bit arbitrary, for example if you look at the A300, A310, A330, and A340, there are obvious similarities between the A300 and A310, A300 and A330, and between the A330 and A340. In each case except the last the differences are clearly less than what you have within the 737 or 747 families. In any event, I’ve broken them up as I’ve seen fit, feel free to argue in the comments if you don’t like my groupings.

So now without further ado, please enjoy this highly scientific ranking of Airbuses.

Photo: Louis Nastro

A340

Sure it’s expensive to fly and maintain, you shouldn’t expect it to be cheap to fly that much awesome around. Unlike other quad engine wide-bodies, the A340 actually looks like it should be capable of flight. It also has exceptionally long range, allowing it to fly between almost any two cities in the world.

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Photo: Cathay Pacific/Airbus

A350

The latest from Airbus, it is designed to head to head with the advanced technology of the 787 and 777X, providing a modern, comfortable flying experience.

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Photo: Airbus

A318/A319/A320/A321

Airbus’ narrow body A320 family has proven extremely popular competing with Boeing’s mainstay 737 line, and even with the 757, though like the 737, they lack the 757's range and so are generally not used on trans-Atlantic routes. Seats on the a A320 family are often around an inch wider than the seats typically used on the 737 leading to a more comfortable flying experience.

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Photo: Arpingstone

A330

The replacement for the A300 has been popular choice for airlines since its introduction.

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Photo: clipperarctic

A300/A310

The first Airbus, the A300 gathered Western Europe’s struggling aviation industry together to build a real competitor in the widebody space. The shortened and lightened A310 competed in the same small two-aisle space as the 767.

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A380

The world’s largest passenger plane, boasts exceptional range, extreme comfort (if you can afford it), madhouse 10, and even 11 abreast seating (if you instead fly coach), high operating costs, and is an exceptionally ugly and ungainly looking plane.

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Jcarr > facw 05/09/2017 at 22:20

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Love me some A340-600. Those proportions...

CB > facw 05/09/2017 at 22:25

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Gotta agree with disliking the A380. It’s not a looker and hell is other people. I can’t imagine the boarding process on one of these.

415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) > facw 05/09/2017 at 22:29

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I haven’t been on either of the two big ones yet. I see them at gates but to go to Japan on one for some reason I would have to go to San Jose instead of SF close to where I am. I don’t care what they look like as long as it’s comfortable. Bring on blended wing designs.

Viggen > facw 05/09/2017 at 22:30

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1: A340, because four engines, best looking, and loooooooooooooooooooooong.

2: A300/A310, because oldest

3: A319821020neolol, because A321neo and A321LR are basically a successor to the 757.

4: A330, because idk?

5: A350, meh

6: A380, I heard it can successfully communicate with blue whales.

WilliamsSW > facw 05/09/2017 at 22:38

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Performance of the A340 is dogshit. Slow as hell. It adds 30-40 minutes to a westbound transatlantic flight. It should be dead last.

facw > 415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) 05/09/2017 at 22:39

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Sadly (or maybe not since I am obsessive about having a window seat), the BWB seems totally dead for passenger use. Both the issue of passengers not liking it, and concerns about quick evacuation.

NASA and Boeing worked on the X-48 tech demonstrator from 2007 to 2013, but that program wrapped up.

In 2015 Lockheed was pitching a hybrid BWB transport that they claim could carry anything a C-5 can carry while using 30% less fuel than a C-17, but I haven’t heard anything come out of that, and there’s no indication they’d try to reenter the passenger jet space.

wafflesnfalafel > facw 05/09/2017 at 22:41

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One of my most fun flights was in an a318 out of Fargo, ND. We were late due to technical issues. The airport is the size of a small convenience store so there was nothing to do. We finally get on the plane and the pilot just hammers the throttles, waits, waits, waits and then yanks the plane up into the air. Yeeeeeehaw! I’m sure not everybody was quite as enthusiastic about the take off but I had blast.

ttyymmnn > facw 05/09/2017 at 22:42

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If it’s not Boeing, I’m not going.

415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) > facw 05/09/2017 at 22:42

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It would be great for a water landing. Put a screen on the wall, I sleep on flights anyway.

facw > Viggen 05/09/2017 at 22:43

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I’ll allow it, if only because I do like seeing the A300 in a Super Guppy:

Sure other planes could get in there too, but I can’t find a picture of another cockpit section being transported. Here’s a bit of A340 cabin though:

facw > ttyymmnn 05/09/2017 at 22:46

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Not being Boeing is going to be a persistent problem as I move across my other four (geographical) categories.

HammerheadFistpunch > facw 05/09/2017 at 22:49

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got a buddy thats building wing bits for the A350, looks like such a nice plane.

facw > wafflesnfalafel 05/09/2017 at 22:54

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BA has an all business class, 32 seat A318 flight from the tiny (~4300ft runway) London City Airport, that then flies to Shannon in Ireland, where the passengers deplane and go through US customs (Shannon was a traditional stopping point for flights coming to the US, so there’s a customs preclearance facility there). Meanwhile the plane refuels, giving it enough gas to make it across the pond where it lands at JFK.

https://www.britishairways.com/en-us/information/travel-classes/business/club-world-london-city

For Sweden > facw 05/09/2017 at 23:05

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1. Baby Bus

2. Who Cares

facw > For Sweden 05/09/2017 at 23:10

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Had I broken out the A320 family, I think it would have gone A318, A321, A320, A319.

WilliamsSW > facw 05/09/2017 at 23:18

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I’m obsessive as hell about getting a window seat (as far forward as possible) . I don’t think I could deal with these, at all.

WilliamsSW > ttyymmnn 05/09/2017 at 23:21

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Airbus’ A320 family is ok, but their wide bodies are not great passenger experiences.

And I’ve read too much about the Air France A33o crash to trust them, either.

facw > WilliamsSW 05/09/2017 at 23:32

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Yeah, I mean most renders show some windows, but even if you go back to renditions from when it was considered more promising, it really drives home how few windows there would be per passenger, and also how poorly they’d line up with seats, meaning they’d likely “dim” or just close the windows in flight most of the time anyway:

WilliamsSW > facw 05/09/2017 at 23:38

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Yeah, that would probably result in a panic attack for me if I was just sitting in the middle with hardly any windows. I’d have to self medicate, heavily.

DarkCreamyBeer > facw 05/10/2017 at 00:06

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Hi frequent long haul coach flyer here. A330s are my favorite ride. They get no respect but are the work horses of many long haul airlines. Sure they made a looooong A340, but the A330-300 is the perfect size and range for so many routes.

In other words: bzzzzzzt wrong

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > facw 05/10/2017 at 04:01

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A300 needs to be higher on the list. It was a pioneer, and really what the world needed. Even the US would have been better served by a big twin rather than the trijets that were used for transcontinental flights. The fuselage diameter is just about perfect, allowing for a comfortable 2-4-2 seating arrangement in coach. Ever get the middle seat of 5 in a DC-10? Pure hell. 3-4-3 in bigger widebodies also a pain. It also allowed the use of standard ULDs, making interchange with long-range aircraft much easier than on a 767.

The A350 is kind of weird looking, and from an engineering standpoint is just too timid. Composite panels on a conventional airframe structure? Still uses bleed air? C’mon Airbus, take a chance.

A340 - the -500 is nicely proportioned, but the -600 is just too long. The earlier versions just looked silly with those anemic little engines. Sure, they were decent at cruise, but climb out was a challenge, to say the least. LAN Chile had to fly several hundred miles in the wrong direction on flights to Europe in order to get enough altitude to get over the Andes. Give me a twin any day.

A330 - yup, that’s an airplane. Silly rake whilst on the ground (which dates back to the first A300), which makes getting to the back seats an uphill climb - literally - and why the freighter version has to have that ugly growth under the nose gear to make it level.

A320 - decent little aircraft, with the A320 the looker of the bunch (although the family nose is a little too blunt IMHO). I love nose gear that is set back, like on a 757. The circular fuselage makes the window seats a little less comfortable than their competition from Boeing because of the curvature, and any increase in fuselage diameter is wasted by this and a wider aisle. Big whoop - give me a wider seat instead. Large enough diameter to use small ULDs instead of bulk loading everything (the worst thing about the 757-300). The A318 is just too inefficient and really should never have been built. Frontier couldn’t find buyers for theirs, and after 18 months most were scrapped for parts - ouch.

A380 - definitely belongs at the bottom of the list. The answer to a question that nobody asked. Great for airline management (if full) but a PITA for customers since they’d rather go directly to their destination instead of hub to hub. Will never be a good freighter. Ugly as sin. The product of an inferiority complex and not a proper read of what the market really needed. They got it so right with the A300, but lost their way with this atrocity. Model number is blatant pandering to Asian countries that view the number 8 as being good luck.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > WilliamsSW 05/10/2017 at 04:07

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Newer cruise ships have big screens in the center cabins that are linked to external cameras to give the illusion of having an outside view. I can see a similar concept being used on these BWB aircraft to give the impression of window seats.

ttyymmnn > WilliamsSW 05/10/2017 at 08:40

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Are you talking about AF Flight 447? Yeah, that was a mess. I think it was a perfect storm of poor design and poor airmanship. The fact that Airbuses aren’t falling out of the sky every day means that their flight control system works just fine. But I guess I’m old fashioned, and it just seems odd to me to drive a bus with a sidestick. And the idea that one pilot’s control inputs are not mirrored on the other side of the cockpit seems troublesome. I find it interesting that, as we hurtle towards a future of driverless cars, we still want a human being, as flawed as we are, driving our airplanes. I think that one of the reasons people are so afraid of flying, even when statistics show you’re more likely to die driving to the grocery store than you are flying half way around the world, is that the passenger feels out of control. At least you’ve got the wheel of your car in your hand. Now, imagine getting on an autonomous airplane. I know that both Boeing and Airbus share the same amount of automation, they just go about it in different ways. Still, I want my bus driver to be holding on to the wheel.

WilliamsSW > ttyymmnn 05/10/2017 at 09:33

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Yes, I couldn’t remember the flight number, but that’s the one. The crew on duty when the incident began was spectacularly bad, no doubt. But it seemed to me that there were some systems issues that exacerbated the problem - particularly the transition from ‘normal law’ to ‘alternate law’, and what the differences were (of course, made worse by the crew’s failure to recognize it). Airbus’ approach to this is a bit different from Boeing’s, although I’d have to dig for a while to recall the specifics.

I wouldn’t hesitate to fly on an Airbus - being here in the US, I’ve never been on an A330, but I’ve flown on the A340 numerous times, and of course the A320 family is all over the place.

I do get a bit nervous at times as a passenger, and know myself well enough to know that it’s mainly due to the lack of control, with a touch of claustrophobia thrown in. I’ve always felt more comfortable when I was the one in the left seat - which is utterly ridiculous, because it’s clearly not as safe as being on an airliner with a highly trained flight crew.

And yes, I’m an old fart who absolutely wants someone driving the car/flying the plane. I think we’re in for a rough transition, as computer systems adjust for the most challenging scenarios - there will be fewer incidents, but we will discover new failure modes which will be catastrophic, and will need to be engineered away after the fact.

ttyymmnn > WilliamsSW 05/10/2017 at 09:42

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While I know they are safe, I just don’t like Airbuses. I don’t fly a lot, but I always enjoy it, and rarely do I get airsick. Last time my family flew, the first leg was on a factory-fresh 738, and the second leg was on a ragged out 320. The 320 was rickety, creaky, and I got sick both times. AB planes always seemed more cheaply made to me. I know that the 320 I flew was considerably older and had many, many more miles on the clock, but there is a general design ethos of AB that I don’t care for.

WilliamsSW > ttyymmnn 05/10/2017 at 09:50

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Back in the 1990's, I flew extensively, and virtually exclusively on United. When they bought their first A320's, I was excited to fly on one - when I did, I came away with that same impression. And I was comparing brand new A320's to 737-500's (and older), as well as the venerable 727. Like you, I know they’re safe, but they just don’t feel as solid as a Boeing.

Nowadays, I find myself on A321's fairly regularly (AA; nee US), and I’m fine with them - but I still find it hilarious when first time passengers start whispering about the dog barking under the plane as we get ready to leave the gate, and taxi. :)

Cé hé sin > ttyymmnn 05/13/2017 at 05:17

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I’ve fly on A320s and B 737s pretty much alternately and I can’t tell one from the other. They’re just planes. Differences are more down to Ryanair vs Aer Lingus.