4 ms·
They say left and right as others have noted, but the main boarding doors on planes are supposedly on the left for the same reason the left is called the “port”
by rmccue 6y ago
They say left and right as others have noted, but the main boarding doors on planes are supposedly on the left for the same reason the left is called the “port”. It appears to be a relic of the flying boat era of aviation.
- justsid 6y agoThere are a lot of such relics in aviation, for example distance is measured in nautical miles, speed in knots and the uniforms and ranks are also very much like their naval counter parts.
- emilecantin 6y agoNautical miles are used in navigation because one nautical mile equals one minute of latitude when you're traveling North/South, making it a very useful unit of measurement on oceans. Planes use it for the same reason. A knot is simply a speed of one nautical mile per hour, so it's a useful unit for speed when you're using nautical miles for distance. So I wouldn't call these two specific examples relics, but I agree with you on uniforms & ranks.
- rocqua 6y agoSpecifically, the nautical mile thing means that any chart with coordinates on it also has a scale in miles built-in.
- parineum 6y agoDoesn't it serve the same purpose, to keep boats/planes going the same direction in the (air)port? It seems less like a relic and more like applying an already found solution to the same problem.