Originally Posted by
fox niner
Swapping seats inflight is total madness, I agree. But flying in the L or R seat is not all that different.
Example: why don’t I totally crash a rental car in south africa/the UK/australia? Doing the clutch or steering wheel my other hand does not cause such a short circuit as riding the bike in the YouTube shown above.
A car is moving very slowly compared to an aircraft as it lands, and the car only needs to be controlled in 2 dimensions, without any yaw to consider. The car is not pushed off course by the atmosphere. So there is more time and capacity for your conscious brain to control the unfamiliar motor movements of an opposite drive car. The equivalent of mishandling aircraft thrust levers is to miss a gear in a car, but you would just slow down, (or over-rev the engine), neither of which are fatal in a car but could be in an aircraft.
You never have to land a car at 140 mph...... !
Having the visual cues reversed left to right can be really tricky in an opposite drive car - roundabouts and turning into side roads can be very awkward because the brain will try to revert to what it is used to.
It is not impossible with practice, and TREs and some flight deck practise operating from the other seat. The problem in this thread is that both pilots swapped seats with no training or practise, and then attempted a highly critical manoeuvre, demanding fine motor control and instinctive dexterity with everything crossed left to right.
megan's point about which hand pushes and which one pulls is also very valid, when an instinctive reaction is required.