The captain sits in the left seat partly because of nautical
tradition, and partly because, in some early aircraft, left turns were
easier to execute than right turns; hence the left seat, which gives
better visibility in a left turn, was assigned to the pilot in
command.
"Why is it customary for the pilot in command of an airplane to sit on
the left instead of on the right?
The custom seems to have evolved from a maritime rule of the road. It
states that vessels approaching each other head-on must pass port to
port (left side to left side). Sitting on the left afforded the best
view of such a passing vessel."
Altoona Automated Flight Service Station: Plane Talk Archives
http://www1.faa.gov/ats/afss/aooafss/plan2.htm
"The captain of an airliner always sits in the left-hand cockpit seat
with the co-pilot to the right. How did this universal practice arise
and does it serve any useful purpose other than fulfilling a
convention?
...Early aviators would often navigate by following roads and
railways. Indeed, on some routes across the deserts of the Middle
East, furrows were ploughed in the sand so that pilots could follow
them.
Aircraft flying in opposite directions along the same line would need
to pass each other 'port to port' (that is one aircraft's left-hand
side to the other's left-hand side), so pilots tended to fly with the
line they were following on the port side. In other words aircraft
drove on the right.
By the end of the First World War the rotary engine was the most
common design for powerful fighter aircraft. In this layout, the
cylinders were arranged radially around the propeller's axle, and the
axle was fixed to the aircraft so that the entire engine spun around
it. The momentum of the spinning engine kept it turning even when it
misfired, giving a fair chance of recovering if a misfire occurred.
When it came to steering rotary-engined aircraft, turns in one
direction were with the torque of the engine, while turns in the
opposite direction were against it, and required much more rudder
movement to compensate. It so happened that the most successful
manufacturer's engine spun in the direction that made left turns
easier. As a result, pilots chose, whenever possible, to turn left,
and the traffic patterns around airfields as pilots manoeuvred to land
usually involved only left turns.
...When side-by-side seating became available (pilot and passenger, or
pilot and co-pilot in larger aircraft), including in later First World
War bombers, the left-hand seat was usually configured for the pilot
(with more complete instruments and controls), because that seat
afforded better visibility for the relatively frequent left turns."
New Scientist: Questions & answers on everyday scientific phenomena
http://www.newscientist.com/lastword/article.jsp?id=lw661
Google Web Search: "why" + "pilot" + "on the left"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=why+pilot+%22on+the+left
Thanks for an interesting question! If anything is unclear, please
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pinkfreud |
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