Daniel's been talking to some airline pilots and came back with a whole set of questions about what it's actually like to fly these machines day in, day out. He wants to know about type ratings — what they really mean in practice — and the specific handling quirks that pilots love and hate about the aircraft they're strapped into for thousands of hours. The heart of it is this: every aircraft apparently has a personality, and pilots develop a genuine emotional relationship with the type they fly. So we went looking for what pilots actually say when the microphones are off — and the answers are surprisingly specific.
The thing that struck me first digging into this is how strange the premise would sound to someone outside aviation. Imagine if your office chair required a government license, and if you switched to a different chair you'd need weeks of retraining and a check ride. That's what a type rating actually is. It's not a category license — you're not just certified to fly multi-engine jets. You're certified to fly a Boeing seven three seven. Full stop. Step into an Airbus A three twenty tomorrow and you are legally not a pilot in that seat until you've done the course.
And the course isn't a weekend seminar. What are we talking — six, eight weeks?
Typically four to eight weeks of ground school and simulator sessions, then a check ride with an examiner. The ground school alone is intense — you're not learning how to fly, you're learning the philosophy of a specific aircraft. Where the switches live, what the automation is doing behind your back, how the flight management computer thinks. Airlines budget somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty to forty thousand dollars per pilot for a type rating transition. This is not paperwork.
So when Daniel asks what pilots love and hate, the type rating is the lens. You're not comparing two sedans. You're comparing two completely different relationships with the machine. And the relationship you end up in is partly career path, partly luck, partly airline fleet planning — but once you're in it, you're in it. Most pilots spend their entire career on one type.
Right. And here's where the love-hate thing gets real. The two dominant narrow-body families — the Boeing seven three seven and the Airbus A three twenty — represent fundamentally different engineering philosophies. This isn't Coke versus Pepsi where they taste different but do the same thing. These aircraft disagree about who's in charge.
Who is in charge, in each case?
In the Boeing, you are. Mostly. The seven three seven gives the pilot direct authority — the control column is physically linked to the control surfaces through cables and hydraulics, and if you want to stall the aircraft, the aircraft will let you try. In the Airbus, the flight computer is the final authority. The side stick sends a request to the computer, and the computer decides whether to honor it within the envelope protection laws. You cannot stall an A three twenty in normal law. The aircraft simply will not let you.
And pilots have feelings about this.
Strong ones. I've read pilot forums where the debate gets... theological. The Airbus crowd says envelope protection is a safety net that lets you focus on managing the flight rather than babysitting the stick. The Boeing crowd says envelope protection turns you into a systems operator rather than a pilot. One seven three seven captain described it as "the difference between driving a car and riding a train."
That's a compressed image right there. The train is smoother, safer, more efficient — and you're not driving it.
And the thing is, both sides are kind of right. The A three twenty's fly-by-wire system with envelope protection has an extraordinary safety record. The aircraft monitors angle of attack, airspeed, bank angle, and load factor continuously. Pull the side stick all the way back and the computer gives you maximum performance without exceeding the structural limits or stalling. It's brilliant engineering.
But?
But it means there are moments where the aircraft does something the pilot didn't ask for. The "alpha floor" protection is the classic example. If the aircraft detects it's approaching a stall, it will automatically apply maximum thrust — go-around power — regardless of what the thrust levers are set to. The levers don't move. The engines just spool up. A pilot transitioning from Boeing who's never experienced this will have a moment of genuine confusion — the aircraft is accelerating and they didn't command it.
"The aircraft has opinions."
That's exactly how one A three twenty first officer put it. And the opinions are usually correct — alpha floor has almost certainly saved lives — but it's a very different relationship with the machine. You're collaborating with it rather than commanding it.
So what's the Boeing side of this? What do seven three seven pilots actually love?
The control column. The yoke. It's a physical thing — you've got a big wheel in front of you that moves, and when you pull back, you feel the forces change. The seven three seven still uses a conventional control system with artificial feel units that simulate aerodynamic forces. When you're hand-flying, you get feedback through the column that tells you how close you are to the edge of the envelope. Airbus pilots flying the side stick get no feedback at all — the stick doesn't move with aircraft response, it just sits there measuring pressure.
Wait — the side stick doesn't move? It's not like a joystick that tilts and stays tilted?
It tilts, but it doesn't give you force feedback proportional to what the aircraft is doing. It's a spring-loaded input device. Push it left and it deflects, let go and it centers. You're not feeling the ailerons through the stick. Boeing pilots describe this as "flying a video game" — and they don't mean it as a compliment.
And yet the A three twenty is one of the best-selling airliners in history. So someone likes it.
Oh, Airbus pilots love the side stick. They love the clean cockpit — no big column blocking the view of the instruments. They love the tray table that folds out. They love that their knees aren't bumping against a yoke for ten hours. And they love the protection. One A three twenty captain said, and I'm paraphrasing, "When I'm flying into LaGuardia at night in a crosswind after a sixteen-hour duty day, I want the aircraft to have my back."
That's fair. So the love-hate split is partly philosophical and partly ergonomic. What about the specific quirks that aren't about philosophy — the things that are just... weird about each aircraft?
The seven three seven's nose gear steering is a great one. The aircraft uses a tiller for steering on the ground — a small wheel on the captain's side that controls the nose wheel directly. But the rudder pedals also provide some nose wheel steering, about seven degrees of deflection. The quirk is that the transition between tiller steering and rudder steering at low speeds feels different from what you'd expect, and it makes crosswind landings a genuine skill test. You're managing rudder, tiller, brakes, and thrust all at once during the rollout, and the aircraft's behavior changes as the speed bleeds off.
So the landing isn't over when the wheels touch.
Not even close. The seven three seven has a reputation for being... let's say "lively" on landing. Pilots talk about the "seven three seven squat" — the way the aircraft settles onto the main gear. If you carry too much speed, it floats. If you're too slow, it drops. The sweet spot is narrow, and finding it consistently in varying conditions is what separates the competent seven three seven pilots from the great ones.
What about the A three twenty on landing?
Different challenge. The A three twenty's auto-trim system is constantly adjusting the stabilizer to maintain the flight path you're asking for. In a conventional aircraft, you trim for a speed and the aircraft holds it. In the Airbus, you're telling the computer what flight path you want and it's trimming to deliver that. The result is that on approach, the aircraft feels... floaty. Pilots describe it as "the aircraft is flying the approach and you're suggesting improvements."
Which brings us to the thing I think is actually the most interesting technical difference between these two aircraft. The side stick priority issue.
Yes. This is the one that makes people nervous when they first learn about it. On the seven three seven, both pilots have control columns, and they're physically linked. If the captain pulls back, the first officer's column moves too. You can see and feel what the other pilot is doing. On the A three twenty, the two side sticks are not linked. They operate independently. If the captain is pulling back and the first officer is pushing forward, the aircraft averages the inputs — and neither pilot feels what the other is doing.
Which is insane until you learn why it exists.
Right. There's a specific incident behind this. Air France flight four four seven — the A three thirty that crashed in the Atlantic in two thousand nine — both pilots were making conflicting inputs in the final moments, and the lack of physical feedback between the controls was cited as a contributing factor. After that, Airbus added the "side stick priority" button. If one pilot presses it, their side stick takes priority and the other pilot's stick is deactivated. A voice announcement says "priority left" or "priority right."
So the fix for "the pilots didn't know what each other were doing" is a button that one pilot presses to take control, accompanied by a voice that tells the other pilot they've been overruled.
That's the fix. And in practice, it works. The priority button is used routinely during training and it's well-understood. But it's a software solution to a hardware problem, and it's very Airbus. The Boeing solution — physically linked controls — doesn't require a button because the feedback is built into the mechanism.
Let's talk about the cockpit itself. Daniel mentioned ergonomics specifically. What do pilots actually say about the physical space they're sitting in for thousands of hours?
The seven three seven cockpit is... a museum piece. In the best and worst ways. The basic layout dates back to the nineteen sixties — the original seven three seven minus one hundred first flew in nineteen sixty-seven. Over the decades, Boeing has modernized the displays and avionics, but the fundamental architecture of the cockpit hasn't changed. The overhead panel still has switches in positions that made sense in nineteen sixty-seven and make less sense now.
Give me an example.
The circuit breaker panel on the seven three seven is behind the pilots. You have to turn around to access it. On the A three twenty, breakers are on the overhead panel where you can reach them. The seven three seven's fuel control switches are on the center pedestal in a position where they can be bumped by a knee or a flight bag. These are not deal-breakers — pilots adapt — but they're quirks that accumulate over thousands of hours.
And yet seven three seven pilots are fiercely loyal to the aircraft.
Because the dated ergonomics come with something that matters more to a lot of pilots: the aircraft feels like an aircraft. The yoke moves. The trim wheel spins — there's a physical trim wheel on the seven three seven that clatters when it moves, and you can hear it in the cockpit. It's noisy and mechanical and pilots love it. One captain called it "the sound of the aircraft talking to you."
The A three twenty's "dark cockpit" philosophy is the complete opposite of that.
Completely. The dark cockpit concept is that a system that's working correctly shows no lights. No indicators, no annunciators, nothing. If everything is normal, the cockpit is dark and quiet. If something fails, a light comes on. It's elegant — you're not scanning a panel full of green lights looking for the one that's off. You're looking at a dark panel waiting for something to illuminate.
Which sounds great until you're a pilot transitioning from an older aircraft where every system had a status light, and suddenly you're sitting in a dark cockpit wondering if the hydraulics are fine or if the light is just... not working.
That's exactly the transition challenge. It requires trust in the automation that doesn't come naturally to pilots who spent decades verifying systems visually. One A three twenty training captain said it takes most transitioning pilots about two hundred hours to stop checking for lights that aren't supposed to be there.
So we've got two different philosophies, two different physical experiences, and two different relationships with automation. What happens when an airline operates both?
That's where the type rating system really bites. An airline that flies both the seven three seven and the A three twenty — and several major carriers do — has to maintain completely separate pilot pools. A seven three seven pilot cannot cover an A three twenty flight. The scheduling complexity is enormous. If you've got a seven three seven captain who calls in sick in Chicago and the only available captain is A three twenty rated, that aircraft isn't going anywhere until you find another seven three seven pilot.
So the fleet decision isn't just about aircraft performance and fuel burn. It's about operational flexibility.
And pilot recruitment. Pilots develop brand loyalty to their type, and it affects where they choose to work. A pilot who loves the seven three seven's direct feel might avoid airlines that fly exclusively Airbus. A pilot who values the A three twenty's quality-of-life features — the tray table, the quieter cockpit, the ergonomics — might seek out Airbus operators. This isn't trivial. It shapes the labor market.
Which brings us to the uncomfortable question Daniel is really asking. Some of these quirks pilots talk about — are they personality, or are they design flaws that the industry has just learned to live with?
Some of them are definitely design flaws. The seven three seven's rudder system in the nineteen nineties is the case study that makes everyone in aviation uncomfortable. There were two fatal crashes — United Airlines flight five eighty-five in nineteen ninety-one and USAir flight four twenty-seven in nineteen ninety-four — where the rudder hardover, a sudden uncommanded deflection, was initially attributed to pilot error. It took years of investigation before the real cause was identified: a design flaw in the rudder power control unit that could cause it to reverse under certain thermal conditions.
It always does. And that's the pattern. A quirk gets dismissed as "pilots complaining" or "pilot error" until the evidence becomes undeniable. The seven three seven MAX's MCAS system is the most recent and most devastating example. Boeing needed to fit larger, more fuel-efficient engines on an airframe designed in the nineteen sixties. The engines had to be mounted further forward and higher on the wing to maintain ground clearance. That changed the aircraft's aerodynamic behavior — at high angles of attack, the larger nacelles generated lift that pushed the nose up. MCAS was designed to automatically push the nose down to compensate.
So a software band-aid for a hardware problem, on an airframe that was never designed for those engines.
And then the band-aid was given authority to repeatedly push the nose down based on input from a single angle-of-attack sensor, with no cross-check against the other sensor, and pilots weren't told the system existed. Two crashes, three hundred forty-six people dead, and the entire seven three seven MAX fleet grounded for nearly two years. That's not a quirk. That's a design flaw that became a catastrophe.
The MCAS story is the extreme end of what we're talking about. But it's connected to the everyday quirks, isn't it? The same engineering constraints — fitting new technology onto old bones — created both the charming personality traits and the fatal flaw.
Yes. And that's why the love-hate relationship matters. Pilots who love their aircraft pay attention to it. They notice when it's behaving differently. They develop an intuition for what's normal and what's not. That intuition is a safety asset. The problem is when the industry dismisses pilot complaints as "just pilots griping" instead of treating them as early warning signals.
Let's talk about the quirks that are genuinely loved. What do pilots specifically praise about each aircraft?
The A three twenty's autopilot is universally described as smoother than the seven three seven's. The seven three seven's autopilot — and I'm quoting a pilot here — "hunts." It makes small, constant corrections that you can feel in the cabin. The A three twenty's autopilot is more refined; it anticipates rather than reacts. On a long flight, that smoothness matters for passenger comfort and pilot fatigue.
And the seven three seven?
The seven three seven's manual flying qualities. When you hand-fly a seven three seven, you're flying an aircraft that responds directly to your inputs. The control harmony — the relationship between pitch, roll, and yaw forces — is something Boeing has refined over decades. Pilots describe it as "balanced" and "intuitive." One training captain said the seven three seven "makes you look like a better pilot than you are."
Which is a backhanded compliment if I've ever heard one.
It is, but it speaks to something real. An aircraft that's forgiving and predictable makes the pilot's job easier. The A three twenty is also forgiving — but in a different way. It forgives by intervening. The seven three seven forgives by being well-behaved.
What about the things pilots specifically hate?
The seven three seven's flight management computer — the FMC — is ancient. The interface is clunky, the logic is dated, and entering a complex flight plan requires a level of button-pushing that A three twenty pilots find absurd. The A three twenty's MCDU — the Multifunction Control and Display Unit — is more intuitive and more capable. Seven three seven pilots who transition to Airbus often cite the FMC as the thing they're happiest to leave behind.
And the Airbus side?
The autothrust system on the A three twenty doesn't move the thrust levers. On the seven three seven, when the autothrottle adjusts power, the levers physically move — you can see and feel what the aircraft is doing. On the A three twenty, the levers stay in the detent you set, and the engines respond independently. It's another example of the Airbus philosophy: the aircraft manages the details, and you manage the aircraft. But pilots who are used to the Boeing approach find it disconcerting — the engines are changing power and the levers aren't telling them about it.
That seems like a recurring theme. The Airbus assumes you trust it. The Boeing assumes you want to verify everything.
And that's the philosophical split in one sentence. It's not that one is right and one is wrong. It's that they demand different kinds of attention from the pilot, and pilots have strong preferences about which kind of attention they want to give.
What about the aircraft that aren't the seven three seven or the A three twenty? The wide-bodies, the regionals — do the same dynamics apply?
The seven seven seven is beloved by pilots — it handles like a much smaller aircraft, the cockpit is spacious and well-designed, and the fly-by-wire system is Boeing's implementation, which means it gives you protection without making you feel managed. The seven eight seven is more controversial — the composite structure makes it feel different in turbulence, more... springy. And the A three eighty is a special case. Pilots describe it as surprisingly agile for its size, but the sheer scale of it — the cockpit is three stories off the ground — means taxiing is a constant exercise in spatial awareness. The gear is so far behind you that you have to consciously account for it in turns. Pilots describe taxiing the A three eighty as "driving a building."
So every type has its thing. The seven three seven has the yoke and the trim wheel and the dated FMC. The A three twenty has the side stick and the dark cockpit and the alpha floor. The A three eighty has the cockpit height and the turning radius. And pilots develop relationships with these quirks over thousands of hours.
And the relationship is genuine. I've read accounts of pilots retiring and talking about their aircraft the way you'd talk about a colleague you've worked with for thirty years. They know its moods. They know that this particular tail number lands a little long in a crosswind from the left. They know that the number two engine on that aircraft runs a little hot in the climb. It's not anthropomorphism — it's expertise.
The question Daniel's really getting at, I think, is whether this relationship is a sign of a healthy human-machine interface or a sign that the machines are still too demanding. If pilots need thousands of hours to develop an intuition for an aircraft's quirks, does that mean the aircraft is poorly designed, or does it mean the task is inherently complex?
It's both. Flying a commercial airliner is inherently complex — you're managing a hundred tons of metal at six hundred miles an hour through three-dimensional airspace in all weather conditions. No amount of automation is going to make that trivial. But some of the quirks we've talked about are unnecessary. The seven three seven's circuit breaker placement isn't a charming personality trait — it's a design decision that made sense in nineteen sixty-seven and should have been changed decades ago. The A three twenty's unlinked side sticks aren't a philosophical statement — they're a weight-saving measure that introduced a known human-factors problem.
And the industry's tolerance for these quirks is... uneven. The rudder hardover took years and hundreds of deaths to fix. MCAS took three hundred forty-six. The unlinked side sticks got a software button.
The pattern is that quirks get addressed when they cause crashes, not when pilots complain about them. And that's a safety culture problem. Pilots are the world's most expensive and most experienced test drivers, and their feedback should be treated as leading indicators, not as noise.
Before we wrap up, Hilbert's been sitting on something about this — and it's about time he told us.
Hilbert: I was a sim tech. Eighteen months, nineteen ninety-four to ninety-five. Commuter airline out of Hartford. We had a seven three seven classic sim — the old hydraulic motion platform, the kind that leaked fluid onto the floor if you ran it more than six hours.
Wait — you maintained the simulator?
Hilbert: Kept it running. The motion system, the visual displays — projectors back then, not screens — the control loading. Pilots would come in to log their mandatory hours and complain that the sim felt wrong. Too twitchy in roll, they'd say. Doesn't flare like the real aircraft.
Was it wrong?
Hilbert: It was calibrated that way. On purpose.
The simulator was deliberately harder to fly than the real aircraft?
Hilbert: The control loading was set about ten percent heavier in pitch, and the motion system had a slight delay in roll that made it feel more sensitive than the real jet. The thinking was, if you can land the sim in a thirty-knot crosswind, the real aircraft feels easy. Over-prepared.
The quirks pilots complain about in the sim are... manufactured.
Hilbert: Some of them. I'd get pilots arguing with me that the sim was broken, and I couldn't tell them it was supposed to feel worse. Company policy. The training department wanted pilots slightly uncomfortable.
Did the pilots ever figure it out?
Hilbert: The senior captains knew. They'd been around long enough to remember when the sims were first installed. They'd tell the new first officers to stop complaining and fly the thing. But the new guys would come to me anyway. Every check ride cycle, same conversation.
For eighteen months you were the guy who knew the aircraft wasn't really that twitchy and couldn't say so.
Hilbert: I told one pilot. Off the record. He bought me a beer and I figured he'd earned it. He'd been fighting the sim for six months and his check rides were suffering. I said, the real jet's easier. He passed his next check ride. Never told anyone.
That's... I mean, the logic makes sense. Train hard, fly easy. But keeping it secret from the pilots seems counterproductive.
Hilbert: Training department thought if pilots knew, they'd slack off. I thought if pilots knew, they'd trust the sim more. I was the sim tech. Nobody asked me.
Do you know if they still do this?
Hilbert: No idea. I left in ninety-six. Went to work for Otis Elevator. Different kind of vertical motion.
Of course you did.
Hilbert: The point is, some of the quirks pilots talk about aren't in the aircraft. They're in the training. And the pilots never know which is which.
That's going to sit with me.
Hilbert: It sat with me. I still think about that pilot. He was a good stick. Just needed someone to tell him the game was rigged.
The love-hate relationship with the aircraft, and now it turns out some of the hate was directed at a simulator that was calibrated to be worse than the real thing. That's... very human.
Hilbert: Aviation's full of things nobody tells the pilots. That one's pretty small, in the scheme of it.
The open question this leaves me with — as aircraft become more automated, do the quirks actually disappear, or do they just move from the controls to the software? The MCAS story suggests the latter. The quirks get buried in code, and pilots don't discover them until something goes wrong.
That's the challenge for the next generation. The A three twenty-one XLR, whatever Boeing builds to replace the MAX — these aircraft will have their own personalities, and pilots will be the ones to discover them. The question is whether the industry listens when they do.
The love-hate relationship might actually be a feature, not a bug. A pilot who's engaged enough to love and hate their aircraft is a pilot who's paying attention. The danger is when the relationship becomes purely transactional — when the automation is so complete that the pilot stops caring what the aircraft is doing.
That's the automation dependency problem in a nutshell. And it's why understanding these quirks matters. They're not just pilot bar stories. They're the texture of a relationship that keeps people alive at thirty-five thousand feet.
This has been My Weird Prompts. Thanks to our producer Hilbert Flumingtop for... revealing that the sim was rigged the whole time. If you've got a weird prompt, email the show at show at my weird prompts dot com.
We'll be back soon.
