Cockpit or flight deck
 

One of the useless questions I get when I tell some one that I sell shoes! is why is it called the cockpit? The fact that the term flight deck is the one used hasn't penetrated to all parts of society so the question still stands. So can someone please put me out of my mysery!

Traditionally it's where the fuel cocks etc were? That's the expanation I had been given. I dunno.
:confused:

In early aircraft, where the plucky aviators sat was on a small bench in a (relatively large) roughly circular area within the fuselage of their flying machines.

This area looked to the interested public like the fighting pits in which one set one cockerel against another.

Hence the term "cockpit".

Given the fact that nowadays there is no resemblance whatsoever to the origin of a "cockpit" (which term I would accept were I flying a Stampe or a Tiger Moth) and given also the inevitable sni9gers and smirks that accompany the term among non-aviators, my preference is strongly for "flight deck".

I think it's an old nautical term referring to the recessed area on the deck of a sailing ship where the helm is.

From the OED....

cockpit

• noun 1 a compartment for the pilot and crew in an aircraft or spacecraft. 2 the driver’s compartment in a racing car. 3 a place where cockfights are held.

— ORIGIN from COCK + PIT1; sense 1 derives from an 18th-century use denoting an area in the aft lower deck of a ship where the wounded were taken, later coming to mean the opitc or well from which a yacht was steered.

Was told during my military training the term cockpit originated from the days of early aviation in un pressurized cockpits.
This allowed crew to use a chicken to to be some sort of a warning to the crew that the altittude had been exceeded.
Idea was the chicken would suffer from the hypoxic effects long before the crew did.
Sounded like a stretch to me but maybe true.

Flight Deck has been known to be associated with an elevated platform, a "cockpit" that would be entered by having to take a step up for entry, as on a DC-6, F27, etc...

Or step down as in the 757...

Or up, as in the 767...