Helicopter Pilot's Seat On Right Hand Side- Why?

Question

It's a well known fact in conventional airplanes the pilots seat is on the left, copilots on the right. This is reversed in helicopters. Where did the origin of the pilot being on the right hand side originate and the reason for it?

I have done some research myself and found that it is because of the dominant right hand. Nothing on who mainly came up with the design. My guess would be Sikorsky. So I'll give credit to the first answer- thanks.

Answer 1

I think that it is so because in the first helicopters the collective bar was between the 2 seats, so the pilot set on the right had his left hand on the bar and the right on the stick, and usually the right is the most precise hand , and it's better to have it on the stick rather than on the bar.(well for the biggest part of the people....)
So the commander seat is usually set on the right, while the co-pilot or passengers are on the other seat, because in that seat they would use hand in an inverse than comfortable way...
But in modern helicopters when predisposed for 2 pilots, every pilot has his own collective bar on the left of his seat, so he can pilot comfortable...

Answer 2

I remember researching this answer a while back and found out that every pilot has his own reason for believing the right seat is the "pilot's" seat. There are as many theories as there are pilots, so just pick the one that sounds best to you. I have flown in a lot of helicopters where the pilot was on the left, and there were no controls on the right. Go figure.

Answer 3

The command seat in a helicopter is on the right side because typically, that is the lowest point of the rotor disc, in relation to the ground. This gives the pilot better vision at the most likely point of contact (of something you don't want to be contacting).

Comfort-wise, and security-wise, I would rather fly from the left side, and have the collective between me and the door. I've had front seat passengers grab my left arm in the past when hit by turbulence - not a real good thing to have happen. It's also easier to lean over the collective to see an external load than to lean away (to the right).

Answer 4

The pilot's seat of a helicopter is, and note I say, "typically" on the right side of the aircraft because the vast majority of us are right handed. This allows our smarter, (right,) hand to remain on the very sensitive cyclic control as our left hand handles the various, less precise duties of flying rotor wing aircraft, such as adjusting the collective blade pitch controls, switching radios, handling transponders and the like.

And if I had to chance a guess at the origin, I'd wager that during the development of modern helicopters, the aircraft kept getting banged about as right handed pilots attempted to change radio frequencies, transponders settings and such.

And I should point out that the layman's, (fixed wing pilot's) definition of autorotation is; "the flight maneuver designed to occupy the pilot's time as the aircraft is rapidly plummeting towards the ground."

Answer 5

I have a better question, why fixed wing pilots seat on the left?