I recently visited an RAF museum and whilst looking at the front section/nose of a English Electric Canberra,the wife said" the cockpit is very small".Standing just behind the both of us,one of the museums attendants said "sorry it's not the cockpit, it's the flight deck, I'm ex RAF cabin crew, and we were not allowed to call it the cockpit,mind you there were a couple of cocks up there". I very politely replyed "don't aircraft carry cockpit voice recorders"? He just smiled. Out of curiosity I just wondered what other members views were on the terminology? regards....Graham.
Perhaps the criteria (rather than PC crap) should be "You walk into a flight deck, climb into a cockpit". Not to overlook the increasing likelihood these days of it being a 'box office'.
The term Flight Deck is a reflection on the development of commercial aircraft since the war and certainly in era of the large capacity passenger carrying aircraft.Even so, the term Cockpit lingers on to describe the station where the aeronautical controls of the aircraft are situated under the Pilot and the First Officer. The term Flight Deck may have crept into RAF usage for the large transport aircraft currently in use.Transports such as the Atlas,Voyager and C 17 Globemaster have pilot stations not dissimilar to large commercial aircraft and I would think that the aircraft manufacturers would apply the term and it would be found in aeronautical engineering drawings. Getting back to the Canberra and serving on a station where two such squadrons were based,the cockpit was the cockpit where the aircraft could be a two seater or three seater. I would doubt if English Electric,the manufacturer would have termed the Canberra pilot control station as anything but the cockpit....the flight deck as a term was never in general use in the Canberra service era. As an aside. One term that has fallen into disuse is Flight Lines which described the area where a squadron would park and line up its its aircraft close to their hanger either on grass or a concrete apron, if available.I would think that this term originated in the Great War RFC/RAF and continued in the early days of WW2. The practice of using Flight Lines was quickly discontinued when aircraft so parked were found to be vulnerable to Luftwaffe attacks.A new airfield defensive policy was introduced where aircraft were parked well away from technical sites such as hangars. Existing airfields were provided with remote dispersals and newly laid down airfields were constructed to the new Class airfield construction specifications according to their anticipated use. Afterthought....... further thinking about the Flight Deck,the difference between a Flight Deck and a Cockpit is that the Flight Deck can be entered and exited in flight while such mobility is not possible with a Cockpit.However,this convention would not be applied to such multi crewed aircraft of yesteryear such as the Lancaster and other bombers and such transports as the Dakota etc
