Why does the Captain sit on the left?

[VC10 Rib22]

Before being flamed, I wish to inform all that I have carried out what I believed to be a fairly in-depth search for an answer in the Pprune archives but I still feel as though the replies are inconclusive. Maybe I have missed a relevant post or reply, and if so I apologise, but can anyone provide a definitive and well- reasoned answer (minus stories of ' ye old medieval knights ' ) ? ;)
Thanks

[catchup]

'cause Copilot is sitting on the right.

regards

[Jet A1]

Best view of lovely ladies getting on the aircraft !

[Bre901]

IIRC a quite relevant answer has been posted already. I searched for it but I couldn't find it :(

Had to do with the left-hand turn being easier with WWI rotating engines.

[cringe]

Here it is:

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=1091622&#post1091622

[lomapaseo]

I had thought it was from the coach drivers of old, having their whip hand centered in order to handle horses side by side without having to cross over his body and lose aim.

[derbyshire]

...Always keep the road/railway you are following on your left?

[Captain Airclues]

derbyshire

I think that this is a Chicken/Egg question. Do we fly with a line feature on our left because the pilot sits on the left, or does the pilot sit on the left because we keep the line feature on the left?

Airclues

[Old Smokey]

It's probably one of those questions that will never be answered, but good fun anyway. I'd always assumed that as the Airplane (spelled that way in deference to it's country of origin) was an American invention, and as Americans drive their automobiles sitting on the left, that it flowed on to aircraft.

In my own experience in a past life, when I would ask students to do a roll without specifying the direction, at least 90% did so to the left (and this was in tandem seating aircraft). Now, in a later life, when I ask students to do a steep turn in the simulator without specifying the direction, 90% will still go left, irrespective of whether sitting in the left or the right seat. Seems to work in Northern and Southern Hemispheres, so Coriolis can't be a factor.

Another mystery of aviation ?

[Colonel W E Kurtz]

Don't forget in a helicopter the captain always sits on the right!:8

[Bre901]

Colonel
That is addressed too in the post found :ok: by cringe
RTFP :p

[Firestorm]

My penny's worth.

I thought, or was led to believe, that the Captain sits on the left so that he can see the traffic that he must give way to coming from his port side.

Doesn't explain the fling wing situation, but if I read the thread that has been posted by Bre109 I might find the answer!

[Bre901]

Firestorm

If you read this thread ;) you would have noticed that I was merely mentioning the post, cringe found it :ok:

BTW, I'd appreciate if you could spell my name correctly.
AFAIK there was never a Breguet 109, and I have nothing to do with the Lancaster & Carlisle Line Bridge Number 109 (http://www.dhaynes.freeserve.co.uk/fmrc/04_br109lc/04_br109lc.htm), nor with an East-German locomotive (http://www.eilzug.de/schilda/img/109.jpg). ;)
Moreover, the most famous # 109 (http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/9378/bf4.jpg) was working for the side my family suffered too much from.

[srjumbo]

Derbyshire has it.
The captain on a fixed wing aircraft sits on the left because before electronic nav aids navigation was conducted using features like railways, rivers etc. There were even, allegedly, tractors stationed in the desert which made grooves in the sand to assist the early flights over Africa.
By keeping to the right of these features (air law) the best seat was on the left for the Captain!

[Mago]

I will not answer the old age question, but I will answer the Helicopter dilemma:

Once I saw an interview made to Mr. Sikorsky regarding this matter and told that when he flew his first helicopter he did (of course from the left seat), then he trained an assistant and this person seated on the right seat, this assistant trained some (I dont remember how many) other pilots to be Helicopter Flight Instructor for the military, that was the only at first costumer for that contraption; as those new flight instructors were trained to be seated on the left seat, they trained everybody else to be seated on the rigth seat, and so the monster was created.

Discuss!!!

[Flight Safety]

Here are several possible explanations (and the sources), which combine possible reasons for the pilot (captain) sitting on the left, with reasons why most aircraft are boarded from the left...

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.

Patrick Manley, Retired British Airways Captain Hythe Hampshire.

(Boating practice in the US, also uses "port-to-port" passing on open water, unless signaled othewise.)

The answer to this probably goes back long before the dawn of the aeroplane. Most of the First World War aircraft displayed at the Royal Air Force Museum have steps on the port side of the fuselage to enable the crew to climb in. Many early pilots were experienced horsemen, used to mounting a horse from the left-hand side--if you have a sword hanging on your left side it is easier to get onto a horse from the left than from the right. This seems to have set the trend: the first airliners were converted military aircraft and designers seem to have followed the convention. Now that airports have boarding piers designed for left entry it would be very difficult to break this habit.

Peter Elliott , Department of Research & Information Services Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon

When side-by-side seating for pilot and co-pilot first developed, the single joystick would frequently be between the two seats so that either of the crew could use it. For a right-handed pilot, it would be natural to sit to the left of the stick, leaving the co-pilot to sit on the right.

Ian, Ashford Middlesex (no other source info given)

Here's a longer explanation previously given in the other thread linked in an above post...

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.

This persists today. Airfields where radio control is not used display a special visual signal if the traffic pattern is to the right, because this is the exception.

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.

That answers the first question, and the second follows on from it. When the pilot in the left seat of a 1920s airliner taxied in to the terminal building, typically on unmarked grass, the aircraft would be positioned to minimise the distance the passengers had to walk. To do this safely the pilot had to be able to ensure that the nearest wingtip was clear of the building--and obviously the pilot would watch the wingtip that could most easily be seen: the left one.

Equally, the pilot would not park with the tail to the building, otherwise the engines' prop wash would blow directly over the waiting passengers and spectators. So the aircraft was parked alongside the building, with its left side closest to it. This is why the main passenger door was usually put on that side. By the mid-1920s, this had become established practice, and there the doors are still.

Michael Fortescue, Cheltenham Gloucestershire

(The usual airfield traffic pattern to approach and land, also involves left hand turns)