Definition
A rotating chair used in pilot training to deliberately produce spatial disorientation, allowing the pilot to experience and recognize the false sensations the inner ear creates during sustained or changing rotation.
Plain English
A spinning chair used during training so a pilot can feel — in a safe setting — how easily the inner ear can be fooled about motion and orientation.
Context Anchor
Seen in instrument flying discussions about coping with spatial disorientation and learning why body sensations can be unreliable in flight.
Derivation
Named after Robert Bárány, an Austro-Hungarian physician who won the 1914 Nobel Prize for his work on the vestibular system (the inner-ear balance organs). His name on the chair is a reminder that the device demonstrates exactly what he studied: how the inner ear senses — and misreads — motion.
Why Pilots Care
Experience in the chair shows why a pilot can feel level or in a turn when instruments show otherwise, reducing the chance of reacting to false sensations in actual instrument conditions.
Intuition Check
A Barany chair is not cockpit equipment. It is a ground-training device used to demonstrate how the body can misread motion.
Example Sentence 1
During physiological training, the instructor used a Barany chair to show how quickly the sensation of turning fades even though rotation is still occurring.
Example Sentence 2
After the Barany chair stopped rotating, the pilot felt a strong illusion of turning in the opposite direction.