A Flight in the A320neo

Andrew Godden · September 2, 2020

Much has been commented on the A320neo in different forums, and in some instances, not without good reason. How bad is it really.....I thought it was time to go and find out.

Now, I am an A320 family numpty. Whilst I have some of the 3rd party detailed add-on aircraft for legacy flight sims, it is the one major commercial airliner I have neither spent a lot of time in, nor mastered. So, which ever way this was going to go, it was going to be interesting.

I had just flown the Cessna CitationJet CJ4 from Queenstown (NZQN) to Adelaide (YPAD). Quickly setting up a flight plan for an onward journey to Singapore (WSSS), I boarded the A320neo at the gate. A quick cockpit and systems familiarisation and I was as ready as I was ever going to be. My first challenge, engine start and ready to taxi, with no checklists, and no assistance...no real problems there.

Take-off went without any problems and after some fiddling with the AP, I got the aircraft on track and climbing to my cruise altitude. There are certainly some nuances with the A320neo, just like there are with a lot of the default aircraft, and hopefully we will see improvements in time, range is a common problem that also affects the A320neo. An afternoon departure from YPAD was going to mean a night landing at WSSS...maybe I shoud have thought that one through a bit more. Nonetheless, after a go around at WSSS, my second approach had me down on the touchdown marks and all in all a reasonably pleasant flight. My lack of familiarity with the AP functionality caused me more problems than any lack of accuracy in the functionality itself.

If you read the various comments on forums about the inaccuracies and problems with the A320neo, the AP is one of them. Now I'm sure a percentage of those comments are actually valid, and the AP doesn't do what it should do, but then there are things I do that a real world pilot doesn't do, so for now, I'm calling it equal.

Cheers
Andrew

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