The 2 engines versus 4 engines debate is going to be with us for a very, very, VERY long time. The Boeing 777 was designed from the outset to be quite flyable on one engine and it IS the first jetliner designed to be ETOPS certified "out of the box". If you've ever read Twenty-First Century Jet by Karl Sabbagh, you'll find out that the design process for such a large twin wasn't taken capriciously yet is consistently capitalized by the salesmen pitching the A340 series and critics of ETOPS ratings.
And let's remember that four engines isn't a guarantee either- there was the British Airways 747 that encounted that volcanic ash cloud that resulted with what was then considered the improbable- flameout and shut down of all four engines. And there's also the crash on takeoff of a USAF E-3 AWACS aircraft, also equipped with four engines. Yukla 27 suffered multiple birdstrikes on takeoff out of Elmendorf AFB that flamed out 2 of the 4 engines.
Personally, four-engine proponents really need to stop hyperventilating about their perceived benefits. Statistically, it's not necessarily safer but in some cases worse, since you have double the propulsion systems now to fail, increasing failure chances twice. But, as Mark Twain, once said, "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics".
Now I may be wrong on this one, but the cross-cockpit commonality of the Airbus series is really only relevant across the A320 family and perhaps to a lesser extent the A330. I seriously doubt airlines will schedule A320 series pilots in the A330 or A340 as these larger aircraft typically go to the more senior pilots in the airline. Something as simple as the pilot hierachy renders the cross-deck commonality irrelevant unless the airline has figured a way around the seniority issue.
So in essence what you have is a pool of pilots for the A318/319/320/321 and a pool of pilots for the A330/340. From the standpoint of cockpit crews, this is no different than an airline that has 737s and 757s/767s (such as Amercan or Delta).
Performance-wise, I think the strong suits in the Airbus line are the A340-500 and -600 versions. Getting Trent engines I think has given them much better performance than the CFM-powered A340 versions.
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Piss on noise abatement!
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