My opinion: Sidestick. Reason: It's more comfortable to be in the Airbus cockpit than any Boeings that I've flown, which are 727, 737, 757, 767. It's all about ergonomics for me and the 'Bus has ergonomics, the Boeings don't. That's from 4,000 hours of A-319 & A-320 time and the other 18,000 in Boeings.

As has been said in this thread a few times, you want to see what the other guy is doing, you look at the other stick. It's no more trouble than looking at a yoke.

I've yet to fly an airplane that doesn't work like this: pull back to raise the nose, forward to lower it. Left is left, right is right. Not enough, then do more. Too much, back off a little. Doesn't matter a bit about control laws, that's what you do whenever you fly an airplane.

I'm a patriot, buy American and all that if there's a choice. But I don't have an American made dirt bike because they don't exist, and I like Airbusses because they're quiet, comfortable, and they don't have that big steering wheel in the way of everything, and that scenario doesn't exist in any Boeing. But then, I don't give a crap how fast, how high, or how good on one engine, or how nice it lands. I care about my own comfort. They're all flyable, and if you can't fly one, you can't fly any. And rumor has it that Boeing 787s are pretty much made everywhere but in America, so there goes that argument.

That said, I'm flying Boeings right now but will soon bid back to the 'Bus because its the same pay scale as the 757 at United, and that's what I fly 95% of the time.

I don't think it will ever be definitively proven one way or the other whether AF 447 would have had a different outcome or not if there was a yoke instead of a stick, but it's pretty commonly known that the guys flying that plane were not acting like trained professional aviators so who's to say what they would have done if there'd been a couple of yokes in the thing instead of sidesticks?

TW