Right hand doors

[SteveSmith]

This is the kind of thing that occurs to me on the silly o'clock morning flight.

I've only ever boarded and de-boarded aircraft on the left, and it seems to be the case at every airport I know that SLF use the left of the aircraft, fuel and luggage goes on the right.

Obviously there need to be doors on both sides for use in emergencies, but is there any airport, or any situation, where passengers go through the right-hand doors in non-emergency use?

Steve.

[manintheback]

There is indeed or at least was, and if mem serves me right many years ago exiting a 747 at Philly on the right.

[BOAC]

Normally, on the 737, what we call 'lift-on' wheelchair passengers come aboard that way. Otherwise it is strictly for 'Service' ie catering.

[eightyknots]

On some planes the doors on the right hand side are smaller than the ones on the left.

[Getoutofmygalley]

There was a flight I operated into BFS earlier this year. Our APU was inop and the ground staff were supposed to be plugging ground power into the aircraft so that we could then disembark the aircraft without it getting plunged into darkness (was around about 21:00 at the time). The ground staff in BFS plugged in a GPU, it didn't work, tried another, didn't work, tried a third - didn't work so we had to disembark pax via door 1R and leave the number 1 engine running. The ground staff eventually realised that the problem with all three of the GPUs was that they had failed to start them!!!

Whilst it wasn't ideal for the pax to disembark via the right hand door, and totally unacceptable to disembark with the number 1 engine running, the pax had been sitting on the aircraft for nearly 30 minutes with unacceptable heat (approaching 38c) as the aircon wasn't working due to the inop APU.

The ground staff were given a bit of a talking too by the Captain when the problem was realised!

[flybywire]

I remember disembarking via steps 339 passengers from door 2R at MXP in 2002 as the ground staff at terminal 2 had never seen a 777 before and just couldn't operate the jetty...... Funny enough though, Air Europe Italy 777s were based there...

737s' right hand doors are much smaller that the left hand ones, so it's unlikely that they would ever be used for boarding purposes.
As for other aircraft with equal doors (like the A320 family and most long haul aircraft) it is likely that while boarding/disembarking takes place something else is going on on the right side of the aircraft like refuelling, loading/unloading of bags, toilet servicing on some planes etc. making boarding on the right a bit tricky!!

For emergency situations then it's a different story!