Why You Always Enter The Plane From The Left
An old maritime tradition
When people scan their boarding passes and wait in the queue to get onto a commercial plane they usually aren’t thinking about the logistics of such a mundane sequence. As people shuffle down the jetway and onto their flight, they are thinking about how they’re going to stow their carry on or where their seat is. They aren’t think about what side of the plane they are entering. It is on the left side of the aircraft. People always enter planes from the left side.
This doesn’t seem like a remarkable fact until you realize that this is the same, no matter whether you are getting on a flight in Madison, Wisconsin, or Tokyo, Japan. In every airport in the world, people shuffle onto their flights on the left side. But why? Why do people board planes from the left? The answer to that question dates back to the Age of Sail and ancient maritime traditions.
Anyone who has spent any time on boats and ships knows that mariners like to use the words starboard and port for right and left, respectively. Starboard is a term that comes from Old English, which means steering side. Port is called so because it was the side of the boat that always docked in port. Ships always tied up with their left sides secured to the dock. This way, no matter what port you sailed into, everyone was on the…
