He’s also former Air Safety Chairman for the Air Line Pilots Association. With over 24,000 hours in the air, Kay is a training and check pilot on the 757 and 767 and will soon move to captaining the Boeing 777, the biggest passenger plane flying for any US airline. He went on to be First Officer on the larger Boeing 757 and the twin-aisle 767, before making captain on the Airbus A320, which he flew for years. Early in his airline career, Kay flew the Boeing 727 and the 737s that entered service in the late 1980s, now known as 737 Classic. Where one comes up short, the other one excels,” said Captain Rory Kay, in an interview with TPG. “I love both aircraft for different reasons. See privacy policy.īut what does a professional, highly experienced pilot think of the planes? The Points Guy will not share or sell your email. I would like to subscribe to The Points Guy newsletters and special email promotions. The 737’s cabin and flight deck width are still the same size as the original 707 that first went into service in the 1950s. It was a descendant of two early Boeing planes, the four-engine 707 and the 727 tri-jet. The twin-engine Boeing 737 goes back over 50 years, with a first flight in 1967. More than 8,600 A320-family aircraft, including the smaller A318 and A319 and larger A321, have been delivered. Fly-by-wire meant that pilots sent their inputs to a computer that would then move the control surfaces.Īirbus has continuously updated the aircraft, and its latest iteration is the A320neo, or “New Engine Option,” with more fuel-efficient and quieter Pratt & Whitney or CFM International turbofans. With the A320, Airbus transformed how pilots interact and fly the airplane. It was revolutionary at the time, with side-sticks replacing traditional yokes and extensive use of glass displays instead of mechanical dials and gauges on the flight deck. Launched in 1984, the A320 was a clean-sheet design that incorporated digital fly-by-wire control systems. They have safely flown countless millions of hours, and both programs have been hugely successful. Let's take as an example the companies' top products, the Boeing 737 and the Airbus A320, respectively the number one and two biggest-selling jetliners ever. That’s not to suggest that one approach is better than the other. And there are two very different philosophies behind how they fly those two brands of airplanes. ![]() ![]() While many flyers may not be able to tell the two apart at the gate, pilots know there’s a big difference. Last year, Boeing delivered 806 jets to customers while Airbus set a new company record with 800 deliveries. The American planemaker and its European rival share the market for large airliners almost 50/50, based on deliveries in 2018, and fight tooth and nail to beat one another. The corporate rivalry between Boeing and Airbus is the one of the most heated on the planet.
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