The reason why you only ever board a plane from the left-hand side

You’ve likely never thought twice about the side of the plane you board on, but there is an actual explanation for it.

Dougie Sharpe, the self-proclaimed “fact guy” on TikTok , shared the historical reason why we board airplanes on the left-hand side.

“The reason we always load and unload planes from the left-hand side of the plane is a holdover from when humanity moved on boats,” he explained in the video .

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Sharpe said that since ancient times, the left-hand side of boats was the side cargo and passengers would load and unload from.

“This made things simple logistically and would allow ships to travel all over the world from port to port and always have the correct equipment on the correct side no matter where they went,” he explained.

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This allowed for consistency and ease with building ports because everyone agreed that the left-hand side was used for loading and unloading.

It explains why the left-hand side of the boat is called the “port side” and the right-hand side is called “starboard.”

“As humanity changed from boats to airplanes, engineers just held the concept over and designed every airport and airplane so that passengers always load and unload the plane from the left-hand side,” he concluded.

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One person commented agreeing, “all true, May I also add, the term starboard comes from the fact they used to have a steering board on the right side of the ship.”

“These are my favorite types of facts; practices that have lasted thousands of years,” another said.

The managing editor of “ The Aviation Historian ” Michael Oakley has previously explained this as well.

“It is one of the many aviation practices that goes back beyond aviation itself to the traditions of ships,” Oakley told AFAR Media in January.

“Much of aviation terminology had its origins in maritime lore (rudder, cockpit, cabin, bulkhead, knots, etc.), and similarly, the aeronautical ways of doing things owe a lot to sailing. Just as boats and ships have a port side—the side of the vessel conventionally adjacent to the dock when in port—aircraft are the same. Sensibly, people decided to continue to board on the port (or left) side,” he said.

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