Airbus A320 family

The A320 did something no airliner had done before: it handed the controls to a computer. Fly-by-wire with flight-envelope protection, sidesticks instead of yokes, and a glass cockpit — in 1987, when the competition still flew cables and pulleys. Every Airbus since has been built on that architecture, and pilots can cross-qualify across the whole family because of it.

It also won the numbers war. The A320 family overtook the 737 in cumulative orders, and the A321neo — 44.51 metres long, transatlantic-capable in XLR form — has become the aircraft that reshaped medium-haul flying, opening routes a narrowbody had no business flying.

Almost 12,000 have been delivered across the family, and the backlog runs years deep. If you have flown in the last decade, the odds are very good it was on one of these.