The Airbus A320 was the first aircraft in its family to use a glass cockpit.
When the A320 entered development, Airbus designed it around a highly automated flight deck rather than the conventional collection of large analogue instruments used in many earlier airliners. Its cockpit used electronic flight displays, including screens that presented flight and systems information to the crew.
The design reduced the number of instruments and helped establish a common operating philosophy across the A320 family. The A319, A321, and A318 later retained the same general cockpit concept, which supported pilot commonality and simplified transitions between variants.
“Glass cockpit” does not mean the cockpit is made of glass. It refers to electronic display panels replacing many traditional electromechanical gauges. The A320 is also associated with digital fly-by-wire controls, but that is a separate feature from the glass-cockpit display system.