If you look at planes they allways have their windshield go from horizon to 45 degrees or more above the horizon. Why is it not the other way around? There is way more to see and be aware of beneath the plane than above. So why do they not do this?
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When you are flying it is what is in front of you that you care about because that is the direction you are moving and you can see enough up and down. If the aircraft is not moving primarily forward but down you are no longer in controlled flight but have stalled and fallen down. You need to regain control as fast as possible because you know what is below you, the ground. It is not that different to a car where when you drive you to need to look in front so you have time to avid something if below you it is too late.
For landing, you need to see the ground but it is quite flat and the visibility you have is enough. Look at for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhUcNh5_UPE and you can see that you have good visibility in front of you. Below the windows, you have all the instruments you alos need to see.
That is for most aircraft there is an exception like the Concorde that had a nose that could be title down for takeoff and landing. https://airwaysmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Concorde_landing_Farnborough_Fitzgerald.v2.png
If you look back in time propeller aircraft often has visibility problem on the ground. Look at something like a WWII fighter that had two wheels in front and a single in the back that resulted in the nose pointing upwards. With them, you often traced on the ground in an S shape pattern and looked bedside the engine.
Helicopter do move directly up and down. So the have window both directly above the pilot https://www.huey.co.uk/img/huey-home.jpg and in the floor infront of the pilot https://i.stack.imgur.com/vmwq3.jpg Windows like that is not required for airplanes because the do not move directly up or down
Because there’s a whole load of avionics, radar stuff, and other flight systems in the nose. There’s no room for a window.
Secondly they don’t need to see down there as all that aforementioned instrumentation provides them with all the situational awareness that they need.
Edit: here’s a link
https://blog.klm.com/hidden-nose-aircraft/#:~:text=The%20Weather%20Radar%2C%20which%20measures,detect%20unpleasant%20weather%20conditions%20ahead.
Planes move forward and “up”. Turning essentially consists of banking the plane so that the direction you want to go is “up” relative to the pilot, and then going there. So, the two critical places to see are forward and “up” – the direction you’ll be going. Landing is the one exception to this – during landing, the nose is high, and seeing a runway can be difficult. Airplane designers and pilots have come up with a lot of different solutions – there are planes like the concorde which actually drop their nose. There are techniques for “crabbing” the aircraft on approach to see out the side. And there’s just plain getting used to not being able to see the runway particularly well.
There really isn’t more to see below the plane. All you need to know if how far from the ground you are and the on-board instruments will do a way better job of that than a pilot trying to visually judge the distance. When you’re traveling hundreds of miles per hour, what’s important is what’s in front of you.
Most important thing to see when flying is the horizon, everything else is useless.
Smaller planes tend to fly looking outside (vfr=visual flight rules) and navigation can be accomplished looking outside often on the sides.
Commercial aircraft fly via instruments (ifr=instrument flight rules) and navigation is accomplished via instruments (mostly gps nowadays).
But ALL landings are done looking outside no matter the type of flight (yes planes can autoland (but 99.9% of landings the pilot MUST see the runway) and subsequent landing IS performed looking at the horizon.
Source: Airline pilot with over 18000 hrs
What? Where would you then suggest all the instrument panels go? On the roof?
It’s impractical because of the technology in the nose, and unnecessary for any non-military aviation. Military bombers and joint strike fighters use cameras to see beneath them. Unless you’re looking to drop a bomb with accuracy you don’t need to see the ground.
>If you look at planes they allways have their windshield go from horizon to 45 degrees or more above the horizon. Why is it not the other way around?
Several reasons:
1. Pilots sit quite high in the cockpit – above the center-line of the window and sometimes nearly as high as the top edge of the window, so they do get quite a good view of the ground.
1. The nose of the plane is filled with avionics, radar, and other instrumentation.
1. Planes don’t travel vertically, like helicopters, but forward and down (more forward than down). There isn’t really a need to see what’s beneath the cockpit.
1. Some planes do have downward facing cockpit windows – bombers, for example.
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