A320: Preparing for Your Type Rating and the ECAM

The A320 is an Airbus twin-engine, single-aisle airliner that first flew in 1987, giving rise to a family that includes the A318, A319, A320 and A321, followed by the neo versions fitted with new-generation engines (LEAP-1A or PW1100G). Its widespread success explains why it's so common with both low-cost carriers and legacy airlines.

For a pilot, what matters is the commonality across the family: the flight deck and the handling philosophy are shared, and differences between versions are covered through differences training, according to your airline's and your authority's rules.

On the A320, the pilot doesn't directly command the control surfaces: the sidestick sends orders to computers (notably the ELACs and SECs), which drive the surfaces. The aircraft's behaviour depends on the active control law. In normal law, flight envelope protections limit pitch attitude, bank angle, speed and angle of attack. In alternate law, some of these protections are lost; in direct law, stick inputs pass almost directly to the control surfaces.

The question that keeps coming up in revision isn't “which law?” but “which failure triggers the change from one law to another, and what do I lose?”. Get into the habit of linking each computer or ADIRU failure to the resulting law and to the protections that remain.

Three hydraulic systems, Green, Blue and Yellow, power the flight controls, the landing gear, the brakes and the thrust reversers. Learn which system powers what, and what remains available when one of them is lost: this is one of the most frequently tested topics in a check.

Electrics are best revised as a tree: engine and APU generators, AC and DC busbars, transformer-rectifiers, batteries, and the emergency configuration with the RAT (ram air turbine). On the fuel side, remember the tank-usage logic, the pumps and the transfer valves. Air covers engine bleed, air conditioning and pressurisation, along with their typical failures.

The ECAM displays alerts on the engine display and system pages on the lower display. The principle never changes: identify the failure, carry out the required actions in order, confirm with the other pilot before any irreversible action (shutting down an engine, operating a guarded switch), then check the system page and the STATUS to find out what limitations remain.

It's the routine, more than the list of failures, that needs to be learned: stay calm, read to the end, touch nothing without confirmation. Every failure has consequences for the approach, the landing distance or a visual approach, which you need to be able to state clearly.

Start with the chapters where the aircraft's “logic” plays out: flight controls, electrics, hydraulics. Do short question sets, read the explanation for every mistake, then redo the missed questions the next day. Save for last the limitations and figures you need to know by heart, which the question sets will keep testing until they become second nature.

Alternate between reading the manual and doing questions: a question set on a chapter right after reading it quickly reveals what hasn't sunk in. Keep a log of your recurring mistakes — it's what will point you to the topics you need to revisit.

Examiners rarely ask an isolated question: they start from a failure and ask you to work through it step by step. What do you see on the screen? Which system is affected? What actions do you carry out, and what do you lose afterwards (braking, control law, approach, landing distance)? A good habit is to always answer in this order: what I see, what I do, what it changes for the rest of the flight.

Questions of principle also come up often: why is this valve open in this configuration, where does the power come from when a given generator is lost, which hydraulic system feeds a given component. If you can redraw the diagram from memory, you can answer.

Plan for thirty to forty minutes. Start with ten minutes rereading a chapter, for example electrics or hydraulics. Follow up with a question set on that chapter alone, then read all the explanations, including for the questions you got right by luck.

Finish with five minutes of writing: redraw the system diagram from memory, and note the three points that gave you trouble. The next day, reread that note before starting a new question set: this is what drives the fastest progress over time.

In the Type Rating tab of the ATPL section, the A320 has question sets organised by chapter, in English like the aircraft's documentation, along with illustrated courses. The ECAM Trainer, meanwhile, offers more than a hundred failures to handle just as you would on the flight deck, from the alert through to the STATUS, in Guided, Self-paced or Exam mode.

These question sets are training tools: they replace neither your aircraft's manuals (FCOM, FCTM, QRH) nor your airline's documentation, which remain the sole authoritative sources. ForAllPilots is an independent site, with no affiliation to manufacturers, airlines or authorities.