Cockpit (aviation)

A cockpit or flight deck is the area, usually near the front of an aircraft or spacecraft, from which a pilot controls the aircraft. Most modern cockpits are enclosed, except on some small aircraft.

The cockpit of an aircraft contains flight instruments on an instrument panel, and the controls that enable the pilot to fly the aircraft. In most airliners, a door separates the cockpit from the aircraft cabin. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, all major airlines fortified their cockpits against access by hijackers.

The word cockpit was originally a sailing term for the coxswain's station in a Royal Navy ship, and later the location of the ship's rudder controls.Cockpit first appeared in the English language in the 1580s, "a pit for fighting cocks", from + . Used in nautical sense (1706) for midshipmen's compartment below decks; transferred to airplanes (1914) and to cars (1930s). From about 1935,cockpit came to be used informally to refer to the driver's seat of a car, especially a high performance one, and this is official terminology in Formula One.

In an airliner, the cockpit is usually referred to as the flight deck, the term deriving from its use by the RAF for the separate, upper platform in large flying boats where the pilot and co-pilot sat. In the US and many other countries, however, the term cockpit is also used for airliners.

The first airplane with an enclosed cabin appeared in 1912 on the Avro Type F; however, during the early 1920s there were many passenger aircraft in which the crew remained open to the air while the passengers sat in a cabin. Military biplanes and the first single-engined fighters and attack aircraft also had open cockpits, some as late as the Second World War when enclosed cockpits became the norm.

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