Canopy is an aircraft door type commonly seen in
single-seater aircraft, it basically consists in a glass bubble over the cockpit that completely opens as a door and when closed it acts like roof and walls.
Variants[]
One of the most common variants in canopy is the way of opening and closing.
- Back-leaning
- Side-flipping
- Back-sliding
Another important variant is that despite it's characteristic bubble-shaped design, not every canopy door is fully madeof glass, in some cases like in F-117 Nighthawk the door has segmented windows with more than 40% of fuselage material.
Trivia[]
- Some aircraft feature false canopy windows for safety reasons, for instance fighter helicopters have a window similar to canopy doors, but they don't open with camopy mechanism due to the risk of hitting the rotor blades, instead they have small doors on the sides.