Many people meet us at shows and tell us that the Detroit has the door on the wrong side.”DC-3s were built with the door on the left side.” While that was true of most of the DC-3s and all of the C-47s, it was not true for all of the airplanes.
C.R. Smith came up with an innovation for passenger comfort. He insisted on a right side door to the airplane. There were two reasons for this. It would standardize American’s operations where they had ramp facilities to accommodate their right side door Ford Tri-Motors, but more importantly, Smith’s philosophy behind the right side door was that pilots started the left engine first preparatory to departure. Boarding passengers would not be buffeted by the prop wash as they boarded the aircraft if the left engine were running. Rumor also has it that C.R. did not want the elegant passengers to see the ramp workers loading the baggage into the left side baggage compartment. In the past, most airlines had ramp facilities to accommodate left-sided door airplanes. Few of the remaining DC-3s today still have the original right-side passenger doors. The Flagship Detroit is one of them.
