Good points, perhaps, but Navy helo drivers are in the right seat for visibility when approaching the carrier from the port (left) side.

The right seat offers the helo PIC visibility when approaching the carrier from the port side for landing.

I've heard that there is a disproportionate number of left-handers among the helicopter pilot community. I don't know whether this is true, but it would certainly be easier for a left hander to copy clearances on a left-sided knee board and to manipulate switches.

I've flown an Enstrom, which is typically piloted from the left seat. It does require the pilot to trade hands on the cyclic when tuning radios, etc. It's somewhat awkward but you get used to it.

A reinforcing factor would be that in almost all helicopters that have a rescue hoist, the hoist is on the right side of the aircraft. This renders the right seat the most advantageous seat for maintaining visual references with the hoisting area/location for all but the most unusual hoisting ciricumstances. Because of this, most of the time the most experienced pilot (i.e. PIC) sits in the right seat.

Sirs,
I just read your article on,"Why do Helicopter Pilots Sit in the Right Seat?" That may be true most of the time of that I can't say but tonight on the news they showed Prince William the future king of England in a Helicopter returning from a sea rescue. There he was co-pilot of the helicoper sitting in the right seat.
They were able to save several of the sailors but 5 are still missing. Hopefully they will be found alive.

I have been a helicopter pilot for 42 years. The historical reasons in the article are true. Rarely are helicopters designed for the pilot to be situated primarily in the left seat, the Hughes 359 (MD-500, OH-6A) and a factory varient of the AS-350B3, are examples. Most military medium helicopters are designed for single-pilot operations but are staffed with two pilots for mission requirements and safety.

Many single-pilot medium helicopter (e.g., Bell 205/212) commercial operators, performing external load operations with 50' and greater long-lines, have obtained supplemental type certifications (STC) from the FAA to move the primary pilot seat to the co-pilot position by moving or installing the necessary primary flight instruments to accommodate the switch. This allows for more convient ease of operation as the pilot leans outside or through expanded bubble windows to observe the external load which greatly increases his precision control of the external load.

Larger, more complex helicopters, that are only certificated for two-pilot operations do not have that requirement for an STC as there is always a pilot in the right seat while the other flies from the left seat.

Military aircraft are standardized as much as possible so that when one transitions from one aircraft to the next, the arrangement is generally the same. In helicopters with fore and aft seating (e.g. the AH-1 Cobra and AH-64 Apache) the PIC station is in the back seat (the copilot functions also as a weapons officer / gunner). Ironically, the front seat of a Cobra has excellent visibility in all quadrants but the back seat has a huge blind spot at 12:00.

The primary flight instruments are arranged in front of the PIC's seat but that does not mean that the PIC is always in the left (or back) seat. Especially in training, the PIC will often fly from the copilot's station in order train the less experienced by placing him/her in the PIC's station.

I almost always flew (military copter) from the left seat as I was the instructor pilot. The pilot may have done much of the flying but I was in command. H-13 was the only AF copter with pilot in left seat, instructor in right seat.

Placing the PIC in the back seat of the original AH-1G was to improve the accuracy of the turreted weapons located under the forward fuselage. You will note that the front seat (and the gun sight for the turret) in the AH-1G is directly over the turret. With no onboard computers, it was much simpler to locate the gun sight in line with the guns firing away from the centerline of the aircraft.
With the advent of onboard computers and the change in turreted weapons control to the PIC (to allow the gunner to control the guided missiles on the wings), I can only assume that the AH-1's PIC remained in the rear because it would have required significant investment to make the logical move of the PIC to the front seat.
Why the PIC still sits in the rear seat in many latter designs of tandem-seat attack helicopters I can only attribute to emulation of the first successful dedicated helicopter gunship, the AH-1, without fully understanding it's design constraints and their lack of applicability to later designs.

As an Army Huey PIC, it was the mission that determined which seat I would choose. The instrument panel in this aircraft is slightly offset to the right, allowing better visibility through the windshield and chin bubble from the left seat - good for tactical flights. On the other hand, the right seat provides a more direct view of the instruments and access to avionics - good for IFR flights.

In the early 1950's I was a Navy Helicopter pilot flying the primary Navy rescue helicopter of that era, the Piasecki HUP-2 tandem rotor helicopter. The helicopter had two 'conventional' seats and sets of controls, and when not configured for helicopter rescue we frequently flew with two pilots. But when configured for hoist-type rescues - our primary mission - we couldn't fly with two pilots!

The right seat was folded forward and the control sticks were removed. The rescue hoist was attached to the overhead above the co-pilot (right side) seat, and under the co-pilot seat was the hatch that had to be opened for the rescue hoist cable. The hoist was operated by a crewman who sat in a jump seat behind the pilot.

That was the best rescue hoist location ever, because the pilot did not need help from a rescue hoist operator to position the helicopter over the man in the water, and to maintain that position. If necessary, the pilot could reel out some 'extra' cable (the cyclic stick also had a hoist switch) so that he could back away a short distance from the rescue 'target' to keep it in sight.

The need to move the pilot to the left seat to facilitate external cargo operations is necessary because American designed single main rotor helicopters(e.g: Sikorsky & Bell)
have a main rotor that turns anti (counter)-clockwise when viewed from above. Due to the thrust of the anti-torque rotor (tail-rotor), those American designed helicopters hover "left wing down". So having the pilot in the left seat moves the fuselage out of the field of view of the load on a long-line.
Although this arrangement makes hoisting from the right seat a little more difficult with a hoist mounted on the right, when taking a load on the hoist cable, the weight of the load tends to level lighter helicopters due to the moment of the weight on the right countering the normal left wing down hover attitude.

The PIC on the Army's UH-1C gunships flew from the right seat, as the 2.75" rockets were on fixed mounts requiring the ship to be pointed at the target. Minigun systems (or grenade launcher) which traversed up & down, and left & right, were operated by the left seat, co-pilot/gunner.

As a fixed wing pilot I've asked myself many times why helicopters' pilots are in the wrong... ops, right seat. Now I know why.
Anyway, there's a chopper with the driver in the left seat and it's the most iconic helicopter in the world: the Bell 47G.

There were helicopters before there were rescue hoists, so I would suggest that the hoist was located on the starboard side after the decision was made that the a/c commander was on the right, not the other way around.