Tandem or Side By Side
The two seating configurations for trainer aircraft are pilot and instructor side by side or in tandem, usually with the pilot in front and the instructor behind. The side-by-side seating configuration has the advantage that pilot and instructor can see each other's actions, allowing the pilot to learn from the instructor and the instructor to correct the student pilot. The tandem configuration has the advantage of being closer to the normal working environment that a fast jet pilot is likely to encounter.
It is now the norm for pilots to begin their flight training in an aircraft with side by side seating and to progress to aircraft with tandem seating. This however has not always been the case. For example, it was usual to find tandem seating in biplane basic trainers such as the Tiger Moth and the Jungmann, and the British used side by side seating in the operational conversion of some of its fast jets such as the English Electric Lightning.
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Famous quotes containing the words tandem and/or side:
“The Cad is the entire epitome, the complete blossom and fruit in one, of what we are told is an age of culture. Behold him in the vélodrome as he yells insanely after his kind as they tear along on their tandem machines in a match, and then ask yourself candidly, O my reader, if any age before this in all the centuries of earth ever produced any creature so utterly low and loathsome, so physically, mentally, individually, and collectively hideous?”
—Ouida [Marie Louise De La Ramée] (1839–1908)
“The inhabitants of earth behold commonly but the dark and shadowy under side of heaven’s pavement; it is only when seen at a favorable angle in the horizon, morning or evening, that some faint streaks of the rich lining of the clouds are revealed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)