To differentiate Airbus A320 from Boeing 737, there’s the cut top corner of the last windshield window on the A320:
Compare with a B737:
Comparing Airbus with Boeing is probably the equivalent of comparing Mercedes with BMW. But I don’t know much about cars. So I’ll stick to comparing airplanes.
The significant differences:
- Airbus is a European multinational aerospace corporation, Boeing is an American company.
- Airbus uses side stick to manoeuver but Boeing still uses yoke.
- The shape of the nose and the windshield.
- Location of some components that would take me days to list out.
(Left: Airbus A320, Right: Boeing 737)
Annoying differences:
- They have different names for similar systems and equipments. Trust me it’s annoying (especially for avionics mechanics) that you have to remember both names. Simple example is: EICAS and ECAM. I still have to think hard which is for which.
- Boeing uses normal Phillips* screw that you can screw in with your typical screwdriver, but Airbus uses offsets screws, therefore, you need to have an extra offset bit. If you still want to unscrew an offset screw using the typical philip screw drivers, than you better go home because you my friend, are screwed. You’ll ruin it (rounded) and it will probably take hours to take them out.
One thing I like to note though: You have no idea how grateful I am that both of them decided to use imperial measurement for spanners. Funny story, this one time I was fixing my dad’s bike with him, and here in Malaysia, most household tools uses the metric system, when he asked me for spanner no.10, I froze. Aviation made metric system an alien to me.
Offset screw.
- Different in design philosophy is that Boeing build aircraft around the pilot while Airbus are more automated.
- In the cockpit, Airbus uses lights out policy, if one of the light comes on, either a system is active or there’s an issue. Boeing continuously show display of multiple gauges.
- The nose (radome) of the aircraft varies between aircraft series.
- Its not Phillips screw but a Pozidrive. It has some differences to it. But still, you are allowed to use philips bit (eg: PH2,PH3) and typical screw drivers. The name for the offset screws are Mortorq and Torq-set
- One I like to add is that Boeing Maintenance Manual are detail and friendly while Airbus AMM are much straight forward.
Author – Farisha Farid
