What is the aircraft shown in the cockpit photo below?
It was sent to me by someone who claims to be a pilot of this aircraft but I have my suspicions.
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$\begingroup$ May I ask the reason for your suspicions? $\endgroup$– Jpe61Commented May 12, 2022 at 15:14
2 Answers
It is an Airbus A320 family aircraft.
Based on the general layout and design, it looks like an Airbus aircraft (although that can be misleading sometimes). There are a few distinctive items to look at when distinguishing between different Airbus aircraft:
Engine instruments
The earlier A300 and A310 still used analog engine instruments, excluding these types since your picture shows the engine instruments on the upper central screen:
Thrust levers
The Airbus A340 and A380 have 4 engines and therefore 4 thrust levers, excluding these types since your picture shows only 2 thrust levers:
Screens
The newer A350 uses wider screens, excluding this type since your picture shows much smaller screens:
The A380 and the similar looking SSJ100 have taller screens instead:
Alternate Landing Gear Extension
This leaves us with the A320 and A330, which have very similar cockpit layouts. One easy way to distinguish them is the alternate landing gear extension system (the one for the A320 is mechanical and located on the rear pedestal, the one for the A330 is located just below the gear lever, marked in red below):
Also note the different landing gear indicator layout (marked in green in the pictures above), since the A330 accommodates for the extra center landing gear of the A340 (same family).
Conclusion
Therefore, the picture you show must be an A320 family aircraft. It is impossible to say which one (A318, A319, A320 or A321) based on that picture. Here is a comparison of the glareshield and pedestal:
And here for the overhead panel:
Image sources: A310, A340, A350, A380, SSJ100, A330 and A320.
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$\begingroup$ Nice. Anything to distinguish this from an A-220 or the SSJ? $\endgroup$– Ralph J ♦Commented May 12, 2022 at 14:44
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$\begingroup$ @RalphJ The SSJ can be quite confusing (hence my recent question). To me, the biggest visual difference is the screens (using portrait mode instead of square or landscape). The A220 looks a lot more different since it was designed by Bombardier (C series). $\endgroup$ Commented May 12, 2022 at 15:10
It matches very closely to this picture of an Airbus A320 cockpit.
Taken from Wikipedia at:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Airbus_A320-214_Vueling_EC-HHA_cockpit_(5508849819).jpg