Aviation questions
What is a cockpit?
The cockpit, also called the flight deck on larger aircraft, is the compartment at the front where the pilots sit and control the aircraft.
It's where every instrument, switch and display the crew needs lives: the flight controls that steer and pitch the aircraft, the engine and system instruments, the radios and navigation displays, and on most passenger aircraft, two seats side by side so a captain and first officer can fly and monitor together. On a small light aircraft it might be a single simple panel; on a large airliner it's a dense wall of displays built around exactly what the pilots need to see at a glance.
It's also the one part of flying that non-pilots almost never see up close, which is probably why it holds such a pull — the same pull that makes a name on a pilot mug land so well for anyone who's spent time behind that panel. Speed and distance in there are measured in a unit most passengers never think about — see what a knot in aviation actually is.
Written by Craig Fearn, Aviation Gift Co.