The Airbus A320 is the aircraft that forced Boeing to modernize the 737. Launched in 1984, first flown in 1987, and entering service with Air France in 1988, the A320 was the first commercial airliner to use fly-by-wire flight controls across the full flight envelope, a system in which pilot inputs are interpreted by flight computers rather than directly moving the control surfaces. It introduced the side-stick controller, the Electronic Centralized Aircraft Monitor display, and a cockpit layout that has shaped Airbus design philosophy ever since. The original A320 carries 150 to 180 passengers, has a range of about 3,300 nautical miles, and has been delivered in thousands of airframes to almost every major airline in the world. The aircraft has been superseded in production by the A320neo family, but the ceo variants remain in service for decades to come.