Do you have recommendations for learning to distinguish between different commercial airliners? I've been looking for a chart or something but haven't had any luck so I'm still only able to tell some of the more obvious ones apart đ
I had some trouble with that myself until I started working at an airport and seeing them every day.
One of the most obvious things to look for is the number and placement of the engines, though most new airliners since the '80s have had two wing-mounted engines, so that isn't always helpful. Some of the other features to looks for are number of wheels, shape of nose, cockpit windows, and tailcone, the arrangement of exit doors, and the winglets.
The A320 (left) has side cockpit windows that slope down a bit, but then the rearmost window is flat on the bottom. On the 737 (right) both windows slope down and join at a point. The cockpit window design is pretty standardized across most Airbusses and Boeings (excepting the A350 and 787). The A320 Also has a rounder nose, smaller winglets (newer versions have bigger ones though), and a tailcone that extends behind the stabilizers. The 737 has a pointier nose, often but not always has scimitar winglets that extend downwards, and has a tailcone that's almost flush with the stabilizers (though on the MAX it extends back more).
If I made a writeup like this for every common airliner we'd be here all day, but those are the sorts of features I generally look for.
For the specific variant, often a good clue is the exit doors.
The A319 has one overwing exit per side, the A320 has two, and the A321 forgoes overwing exits and instead has four full-sized doors.
With some planes though the variants don't have such a clear difference and it sometimes comes down to just looking at reference images and counting windows.
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