A single solution for multiple markets

Widest seats and widest aisle

The only all-new, single-aisle airliner family designed since the 1960s, the A320 has been ‘Setting The Standard’ in cabin comfort, technology and efficiency for more than ten years. A320 technological innovation brought better performance and reliability with reduced fuel burn and easier maintenance. And, with the widest cabin of any single-aisle aircraft, the A318, A319, A320 and A321 have a distinct advantage in attracting and keeping passengers. That's why this Family kept growing.

Meeting this need ideally is the single-aisle A320 Family, offering from 100 to 220 seats' capacity with the same crews, parts, cabin and performance standards.

The A318, A319, A320 and A321 have been developed to have a range of 3,000nm/5,550km in the single-aisle market, range to offer true transcontinental non-stop capability, whether routes are primarily business travel or leisure and holiday travel.

The range shown is for a full passenger payload with baggage allowance. It takes into account fuel reserves and other typical airline operating rules as well as weather conditions, such as head and tail wind.

That means that every Airbus airliner must be readily adaptable and capable of having a cabin configuration that matches the needs of each airline. Just as important, the cabin must be designed to allow rapid reconfiguration to a new layout as the travel market changes or for when the aircraft is moved to different routes or different markets.

Below are two non-specific cabin arrangements showing A320 single-class and two-class layouts.

Step on board an A320 Family aircraft and compare it with aircraft of earlier designs.

Spacious, airy and appealing - that is the opinion of the passengers who have regularly voted the A320 Family into the top spot for comfort in the single-aisle airliner category.

The 222-inch fuselage cross-section gives more comfortable First and Business Class seats and more efficient Economy Class seating than in competing aircraft.

The carefully considered choice of fuselage cross-section has given the A320 Family an ability to provide remarkable levels of passenger comfort in any configuration.

Fuselage width at the critical armrest height is 7.5 inches wider than its nearest competitor, and this gives an operator the choice of two important marketing advantages:

a one-inch wider seat cushion, adding noticeable comfort in a six-abreast layout, or a six-inch wider aisle for easier passenger movement and meal service.

Headroom in the aisle is greater than in the competition, and the overhead stowages hold fully 10% more carry-on baggage.

Whether sitting, standing or stowing belongings, the passenger gets more from the A320 Family.

Today, airlines need families of aircraft with consistent comfort and performance standards across the whole family.

Meeting this need ideally is the A320 Family, the single-aisle family from 100 to 220 seats’ capacity with the same crews, parts, cabin and performance standards, better than any competitive alternative. They cover markets from the low-traffic domestic end of the main jetliner market right up to the start of the widebody mid-size market.

Airlines get a wider family choice to optimally match their fleet mix to a varied route and traffic structure. They can switch aircraft between routes and markets, according to changing travel trends and seasonal, even daily, traffic variations. And all with seamless comfort and performance standards.

Maximizing family benefits is a paramount design objective because the benefits to

airlines can be so powerful.

All A320 Family aircraft share advantages for the customer. They have the same optimised single-aisle cross-section. The cabin interiors provide passenger-acclaimed comfort levels with configurations for wide seats/standard aisle or standard seats/wide aisle. In the A319, A320 and A321 they offer room enough in the underfloor holds to accommodate LD3-46W containers. For pilots, the Same Type Rating applies to all four aircraft. The same engineers can maintain all four aircraft.

The A320 Family also offers the uniquely valuable Flight Operational Commonality with the A330/A340 Family of widebody aircraft. This attribute leads to significant cost savings in crew training and greater flexibility of scheduling on mixed short- and long-haul operations

The fly-by-wire technology that had matured for commercial operation by the 1980s has become the new standard for the crew-friendly environment of the future. It is the common standard for the A330, A340 and A380 flight decks.

Gone are the dozens of round instrument dials, now replaced by just six CRT screen displays. All six screens are fully display/function interchangeable and there are electro-mechanical instruments as back-up.

Four screens, two in front of each pilot, form the Electronic Flight Instrument System, while two central screens are the display part of the Electronic Centralized Aircraft Monitor (ECAM).

Four screens, two in front of each pilot, perform Electronic Flight Instrument System (EFIS) functions.

The outboard screens - Primary Flight Displays (PFDs) - carry data on a range of parameters including speed, altitude, aircraft attitude and heading. Current status of the Flight Management System (FMS) is also shown. The inboard Navigation Display (ND) screens show data on the aircraft’s position and course. These may be displayed in selectable modes: Arc, Rose ILS, Rose VOR or Plan.

Two screens in the centre of the main instrument panel display information derived from the ECAM whose sensors throughout the aircraft keep systems under constant surveillance. The upper and lower screens - both manually and automatically - show engine and systems parameters and warnings.

If baggage and cargo had voices, they would be saying the same as passengers about the A320 Family – it is Setting new Standards.

Resulting from its superior cross-section, the A320 Family offers major advantages in baggage handling and freight loading.

Access to underfloor holds is by large, outward-opening doors which avoid reducing available

volume inside the hold. They give protection during operations in bad weather, helping to reduce damage to baggage and freight.

Inside the holds, baggage handlers appreciate the greater working height and a wider area of flat floor. They increase efficiency and reduce the risk of employee injury, an increasing concern in many parts of the world.

Ease of loading and unloading freight is helped by installing any one of the four freight loading systems – a choice offered only on the A320 Family. Containerized or palletized freight, using units with the same base dimensions as widebody load devices, can be handled by installing the Container Loading System – which again is offered only on the A320 Family.

In addition to all-bulk loading, there are four choices for the A319, A320, A321:

A320 Family operating costs are below those of equivalently sized competitors. It is the result of many technological improvements in many areas, and the sum has become an A320 Family "Technology Gap" of lower operating costs.

Advances in aerodynamics have led to more efficient wing and airframe shaping, which reduce fuel burn, operating cost and emissions. Extensive use of lighter composite materials saves weight, another important element in saving fuel and increasing payload on weight-limited routes.

The fly-by-wire control system greatly reduces mechanical complexity and eliminates many mechanical maintenance and re-rigging tasks. The Centralised Fault Display System (CFDS), links the extensive built-in test equipment to central computers, displays and printers. It reduces systems trouble-shooting time and the frustrating problem of unnecessary component change.

Dynamic Capacity Management (DCM) is the ability to switch seamlessly between aircraft of different sizes, on a per flight basis, to optimize system load factor. The A320 Family provides the means to match, flight by flight, capacity to demand.

Drawing on a common pool of pilots, cabin crew and maintenance personnel, A320 Family flexibility allows airlines to use DCM as an operational dispatch tool.
Airlines can better match supply and demand on services within their network by having a pool of common aircraft with varying capacities and applying these, as appropriate, to different routes or flights.

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