Facts:
A32X series have a cockpit designed in the late 80s.
A22X series cockpit is much newer, from the 2010s, however not designed according to Airbus philosophy.
A35X newest series cockpit is also from the 2010s.

Speculations:
Imagine what an attractive line-up would be A22X/A32X/A35X having total cockpit commonality at today standards. Could be A35X cockpit standard, or even newer.

So, how to improve commonality between the two or three lines?
Almost all of you will answer “Not possible, because it would instantly create an incompatibility in pilot training and certification”.
Ok, but why not assume the hit and move on, rather than giving up because it’s difficult? Why not benefit from this most prosperous era ever for Airbus, to prepare the next era?

In my opinion, such a change would be a huge long-term asset especially for the A32X family. In an FBW airplane, plenty of parts can be improved incrementally, save the cockpit/systems architecture. These will have to stay behind forever [paradigm?], becoming older and older, because of certification (737MAX would be the perfect example). However, once you would make such a jump, paired with incremental upgrades already done over time, it’s like you’re having a 202X-conceived frame.

What do you think about this hypothetic Airbus announcement?

“Dear customers,
We are pleased to inform you that starting from 1st of January 202X, our A220 and A320 airplanes will come out of the assembly line only in the common A35X (alternatively: 202X) cockpit flavor. You should not worry about pilot training because as you well know, we treasure our customers: for one plane bought, we retrain your crew (alternatively: N set of crews) for free!
For ordering our all-inclusive offer, don’t hesitate to drop @Christian_Scherer a message”

Won’t ever be slowed by the FAA. WN couldn’t even have three generations of 737 certified for the pilots to fly all three types. Only two allowed. NG and MAX

TaromA380 wrote:

What do you think about this hypothetic Airbus announcement?

“Dear customers,
We are pleased to inform you that starting from 1st of January 202X, our A220 and A320 airplanes will come out of the assembly line only in the common A35X (alternatively: 202X) cockpit flavor. You should not worry about pilot training because as you well know, we treasure our customers: for one plane bought, we retrain your crew (alternatively: N set of crews) for free!
For ordering our all-inclusive offer, don’t hesitate to drop @Christian_Scherer a message”

Seems we were typing at the same time, here's my thoughts from the other thread:

Revelation wrote:

JerseyFlyer wrote:

I suggest commonality between A220 series and A321 replacement will be achieved by using the former's systems in the latter.

I don't think this will be easy to do. A320 family cockpit tech was mostly in-house (given they were at the state of the art back then) whereas BBD largely purchased tech from what we now know as Collins ( https://www.intelligent-aerospace.com/c ... l-computer ). Even though A220's cockpit is more advanced in some ways, the commercial realities strongly work against it, IMO. Either way convergence will require a lot of engineering work on one or both platforms.

It's a major dilemma for the A220 program. The industry has huge investments in the A320 family in terms of flight sims, knowledge base, etc. Airbus has an ideal "lock in" factor working in the A320's favor, not to mention already owning the intellectual property behind it all. If there is to be a convergence, there are a lot of reasons why converging to the A320 makes more sense than converging towards the A220, even though A220 may be more advanced in some ways. Yet converging to A320 style cockpit would mean pretty much re-doing the certification of A220 and getting buy-in from the existing customer base, which is also problematic.

Personally I see A220 retaining "interesting side project, but just that" status and living/dying on its own merits, rather than the suggestion that it will be the basis of the next generation of Airbus narrow body platforms, because the A320 platform is far more prevalent in the market. I don't really see anyone inside Airbus signaling anything but this, regardless of all the aspirational posts I read here. I see Airbus learning interesting things from the platform, but IMO the evolutionary path will be continued enhancement of the A320 family using the "Wing of Tomorrow" that they've been working on for many years now. I don't think Airbus is focusing on the whole A320.5 vs A225 issue, they're more than happy with the current line up covering this space and are more focused on extending the lead they have with A321.

In short, the A320's current market stature and projected future market stature is a HUGE commercial advantage. It gives Airbus a giant "lock in" factor, one that large corporations lust after. Why wouldn't they just work on improving that huge advantage instead of investing a LOT of time and money in both products to reach a converged architecture? Why introduce a huge amount of churn in the platform when it's already in a very strong market position?

Think of the following scenario: Team A has to figure out what tech to converge to, then retrofit it to two different existing platforms. Both would need to be re-certified so it'll be a huge amount of time and money. Industry wide teams will need to be formed to understand and adapt to the chosen platform. International regulators would need to be involved. Team B could sit back and work on concepts for its new cockpit, then when team A reveals what it is doing team B can cherry pick the best solutions for the new narrow body clean sheet we all know has to happen, along with enhancements it can make because Team A is mostly investing in retrofitting older tech to current platforms. There isn't much of an upside to all of this for Team A, is there?

I think the next jump in cockpit tech will be architectures that allow for single pilot operation and/or ability to "support" the crew by allowing the plane to be flown from the ground. We've heard suggestions that this may be part of the A350F offering currently being mooted. If this becomes a thing, I doubt the answer would then be to move this tech en-mass to A220/A320, I think it would be offered as an add-on enhancement to the A320 rather than replace the A320 cockpit with a A350 cockpit.

I think you may be over-estimating the value of moving to new tech just for the sake of it, and under-investing the investment the airlines have in flight sims and other training tech, and the investments pilots have made to get type ratings. I don't see how it all adds up.

Imho the first step to the path to the future is afforded by very large screens like the 220, 350, and 787 possess. Once the screens get big enough, you can customize and standardize the layout across fleets.

I'll go even further and say the FBW allows airplanes to "handle" the same (even though there is no feedback or feel).

There are not only fewer manufacturers now than in the past but also much more standardized cockpits. That trend will continue, imagine a pilot being a pilot being a pilot able to fly anything.....eventually more of a computer operator with aviation knowledge than someone with stick and rudder skills, which are already dying rapidly mho. Autopilot is already used 96-98% of the time, airplanes are rarely hand flown, especially at altitude, and can't be flown with RNP level precision in any event.

It would cut back on pilot training and probably some maintenance but that's it.