Thirsting for knowledge, I Googled why we drive on one side of the road rather than the other. I found a lot of obvious rubbish about quarrelsome knights and Roman charioteers. I suspect that what really happened was Henry Ford flipped a quarter and William Morris a shilling, and they came up different. Nevertheless, I propose to offer an explanation of why the pilot of an airplane sits in the left seat, and why we normally make left turns in the traffic pattern.
Technicalities: Why Left?
Key Takeaways:
- A plausible theory suggests that common aviation practices, such as pilots sitting in the left seat and making left turns in traffic patterns, originated from the gyroscopic forces exerted by World War I-era rotary engines.
- Rotary engines, prevalent in WWI scout planes like the Sopwith Camel, created unique handling characteristics: pitching the nose up in left turns and down in right turns.
- This gyroscopic effect made right turns particularly prone to dangerous spins for novice pilots, leading to a preference for making left turns during landing approaches.
- The established habit of making left turns for landing eventually influenced cockpit design, resulting in the pilot occupying the left seat in side-by-side aircraft.
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