…like the F16 and F22 where the stick is to the pilots right side? A center stick is theoretically flyable with either. What about righties whose right hand got injured during combat?
I am left handed and have no problem driving a car with a stick shift (using my right hand). Most people in England are right-handed and have no problem driving a car with a stick shift (using their left hand).
I am not a pilot but handedness does not leave your non-dominant hand utterly useless.
Some commercial aircraft have lefty shifts for PIC and righty shifts for co-pilot. So good for you if that works out.
I think any fighter pilot who had either hand so badly injured that it couldn’t control a stick would be grounded.
Is this a macabre whoosh-attempt/pun? If so, congrats, I guess.
I’m looking forward to seeing our resident fighter pilots answer…
I remember one of those History Channel shows on dogfighting (the authoritative source, of course), pointing out that pilots turn more frequently to one side than the other because it is easier to move the right arm one way than the other. True?
And I would imagine that no-one flies left-handed on the stick since it is form fitted for the right hand, with buttons in all the correct places, and there’s other stuff that is only on the left side of the cockpit, where the free hand would be. True?
???
I understood the comment to mean: If a pilot has a badly injured hand, the flight surgeon would ground them. Nothing more than that.
Did I miss something?
I think the OP meant what if the pilot’s right hand was injured in combat during flight - could he still control the plane enough for a return to base & landing?
The planes that I took lessons in had a center stick but you fly with your left hand and control the throttle with your right. I am right-handed but it isn’t an issue. I drive with my left-hand as well.
Yes. GA airplanes typically have a yoke, and are flown from the left seat. So you fly with your left hand and use the engine controls with your right. (In a helicopter – at least the ones I’ve flown – the pilot sits on the right, and flies with his or her right hand.) I am right-handed, and I also drive with my left hand.
And I type with both hands and mouse with my left.
There are planes with a center stick and have engine controls on the left or right.
If buttons and such are needed, then the grip can be made to make the pilot use one hand or the other.
Even helio pilots can use the other hand when cruising along if the collective is tightened up a bit, right Johnny LA?
I would guess that most pilots can fly with either hand as it is not much of a problem to fly from either seat in a side by side configuration.
LSL Guy, do the two pilots on airliners ALWAYS change seats when they are flying their/a leg or taking their turn so to speak? Do you know of any airline pilots ( Qualified on the equipment ) that can’t/won’t fly from the right in tough situations? ( sudden incapacitation of the left seat who was making the nasty, icy, at minimums with a strong cross wind approach) and would abandon the approach and get help moving the left seat pilot so he COULD make the attempt from the left seat. ( assume no ability to go someplace else as that had been done already and fuel was at, “right here, no can go other place no time for more choices/games” ) ??
So, left/right seats or sticks, how much of a problem is it and do you have to be able to do it all from either seat?
I have some small real-world piloting experience and some training sims experience. Commercial/GA aircraft usually have the yoke in the left hand and throttle on the right. Military aircraft are usually throttle on the left, center stick or side stick on the right. I never had any issues switching, didn’t even have to think about it. So there’s one anecdote.
I’m nominally left-handed. I’ve spent years driving cars with manual transmission on both sides, and have no trouble with either. Admittedly, the controls of a plane presumably require far more delicate adjustment than a car’s gear shift, but i think my right hand is actually as good at fine motor controls as my left for most things except writing.
When i say i’m nominally a lefty, i mean that, like a lot of left-handers, i’m actually all over the place.
Things i do left-handed (or -footed) include: write; throw (baseball, frisbee, etc.); kick (soccer, rugby, etc.); knife and fork; kitchen knife for cutting food; guitar and other instruments (I can’t actually play, but that’s what it would be. It’s how i play air guitar :)).
Things i do right-handed: batting and hitting sports (baseball, cricket, golf, etc.); spoon; computer mouse; hand tools (saw, hammer, screwdriver, etc.).
Shooting guns (rifles and shotguns), i face a problem of preferring to shoot left handed, but being right-eye dominant. I’ve never fired a pistol, but i think i would use my right hand for that.
Not a fighter pilot, but my experience as a civilian flying airplanes with various control set-ups is that it’s nothing insurmountable, or even particularly hard for most.
And what about lefties whose left hand gets injured? It’s been my experience that a higher percentage of pilots are lefties than the general public - granted that’s not scientific, just one person’s experience. Most of my flight instructors have been lefties.
Um… maybe for fighters. I know civilians turns mostly left because it’s the default for air traffic, like keeping right when driving on the road, but you’re expected to be able to turn right when called upon to do so.
Again - not a military pilot here but in my experience the center stick on an airplane with such a steering mechanism is either NOT form-fitted to particular hand, or even if it is, it’s not such a drastically odd shape you couldn’t switch if you wanted to do so.
I flew a couple of airplanes where there was a throttle lever on both sides, so you could choose with hand to use the stick and which to use the throttle as you preferred, or as the whim took you during a flight.
The only military airplane I’ve ever flown was an old Stearman, but the cockpit layout there was quite far from today’s standard layout so I’m not sure any comparison would be meaningful.
I never had a problem switching left seat to right seat in civilian airplanes - my buddy with the Mooney always took left seat, so when I occasionally flew that airplane it was always from the right. I’ve been right seat a couple other times and never had an issue with manipulating the controls or the airplane regardless of which hand was on the throttle or which on the yoke or stick. Never heard of anyone else having an issue, either. More of a problem is how some of the cockpits are laid out, where all the instruments are arranged for the designated “pilot in command seat” and difficult to see from the other “co-pilot” seat.
^ Same here.
In GA with side-to-side seating the usual practice is for the PIC to sit on the left, use the left hand on the yoke and right on the throttle. Except when flying with a stick in GA, where usually (in my admittedly limited experience) it’s use the stick with the right hand, throttle with the left.
Never had any problem switching back and forth. Never knew anyone else to have one, either, whether left or right handed.
Eh… be wary of direct comparisons between steering and airplane and steering a car. They’re different animals operating in different environments.
Oddly enough, although I’m supposedly a righthander (largely, meaning I write with my right hand) I’m a left handed shooter. I can shoot right-handed, but from the start my accuracy was notably better left-handed whether with rifle or pistol. But then, I can throw as accurately with my left hand as my right and I suspect I’m not as right-dominant as many right-handers.
ETA: I started this a few hours ago, so lots of good info has appeared in the interim.
It’s as explained in bits by various folks above …
- Single-seat or fore-aft two-crew aircraft with conventional stick and throttle are all left hand throttle(s) and right hand stick. e.g. F-4, F-15, F/A-18. Fighter sticks have a bunch of buttons & slide switches and triggers on them. So do the throttles. The F-15 community refers to their avionics controls on just the throttle as “playing the piccolo”. Simpler aircraft have lots less buttons, but one on each is about the minimum for any post WWII gen av aircraft. Lefty pilots fly those just fine.
1a) The F-16 and F-22 has the sidestick on the right and throttle on the left. I don’t know whether there are any later aircraft arranged similarly. So it/they flown with the same handedness as the aircraft above. Lefties do just fine with it.
- Two-pilot airplanes with side by side seating usually have a yoke or stick centered in front of each pilot and one set of shared throttles in the middle. So captains / aircraft commanders sitting on the left will steer with the left hand and control power with the right. Copilots sitting on the right use opposite hands: right to steer, left for power. A typical airliner will have two two-way slide switches and one pushbutton on the yoke. Plus two pushbuttons on the throttle group. These are intended to be operated by the thumb and so are duplicated on the outboard-most two throttles so the buttons are readily reachable by either a left or right thumb/hand. Both left-handed and right-handed pilots do fine in each seat.
2a) A small fraction of two-pilot side-by-side airplanes have sticks centered in front of each pilot and separate sets of throttles to the left side of each pilot. The T-37, B-1, and C-17 are like this. The result is each pilot has the same fly right, power left set-up as do pilots in type 1) aircraft above.
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Two-pilot side-by-side airplanes with sidesticks (i.e. Airbus A320 & subsequent) have the same general arrangement as 2) above: shared throttles in the middle and individual side sticks outboard. With a similar array of buttons on each stick and on the shared throttles. Again left and right handed pilots work out fine from either seat.
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Helos are different in that they have two sticks for each seat, each festooned with buttons and switches. Each pilot has a cyclic stick centered in front of them and a combined collective stick & throttle system alongside on the left side of the seat. So akin to the 2a) arrangement above, but more complicated. Patting your head, rubbing your tummy, walking, chewing gum, holding a phone to your head with your scrunched up shoulder, and juggling tennis balls all at once is what helo pilots call “taking a relaxing break from flying” Them dudes be weird.
With all that background. …
In something like an F-18 it’s possible to steer briefly with the off hand, in this case left. The stick grip isn’t ambidextrous and your fingers don’t readily find the buttons. But for basic “pull back to go up, etc.” it works. You’d be hard pressed to fight that way.
In WWII days with unboosted controls it was common that pilots could roll right more readily than left. Most people have stronger biceps than triceps. Not an issue since the 1950s with powered controls.
On defense there’s a tendency to fight looking over your right shoulder more than left. The F-16 arrangement makes that a much stronger tendency. Which is not necessarily a good thing. Next time you’re sitting in your car at a stop light, lean forward a bit, crank your torso around to the right without shifting your hips/butt on the seat and look over your right shoulder out through the roof over the rear passenger seat immediately behind you. Keep your right hand on the right side of the steering wheel. That’s flying defense at 1G. Keep your right hand on the wheel and try doing the same thing to the left. You’ll see it’s different and in some ways easier.
Overall bottom lines: center sticks aren’t really ambidextrous in the context of fighter flying. Or even formation aerobatic airshow flying. They certainly are if you’re just noodling around the countryside in your Piper Cub. Many a right-handed pilot has flown left-handed while making notes or calcs with a paper and pencil held in the right hand.
Pilots fly stick/yoke right and throttles left or vice versa with little issue. As a wise old A-10 squadron commander / instructor & airline pilot once put it, “You don’t fly with your hands. You fly with your mind.”
As to a couple of Gus’ points.
In airline or military heavies, pilots stay in their respective seat. The Captain always sits left and the FO always sits right. Regardless of who’s the pilot flying and who’s the pilot monitoring/assisting at that moment. A side effect of that fixed seating is the even-Steven split of duties between PF & PM breaks down during ground ops and taxi. At most carriers Captains taxi, period. Boeings have an optional FO-side nose gear steering tiller but I’ve never seen one on a US carrier. I know some airlines somewhere have them, but I don’t know how they’re actually used or how the taxi duties are divided at those carriers.
For very long haul where a relief pilot (usually a second FO) is needed, that person sits in whichever seat has been vacated. So he may go from jumpseat to left seat to nap break to right seat to jumpseat.
About the only seat-swap emergency scenario that makes any sense would be an incapacitated captain and no other pilots available amongst the passengers. In that case I’d expect the FO to land from his seat, then once the aircraft is stopped on the runway he plus the FA’s would extract the Captain from his seat then the FO would taxi from the left seat to a jetway where a medical crew can come aboard.
I’m not a pilot, but I’m going to go with “not likely.” Here’s an F-16 cockpit; the F-22 cockpit has a similar layout. The flight control stick is well off to the right - and of equal importance, the throttle quadrant is well off to the left (black item with white knobs, near center of photo). There doesn’t appear to be anything in the cockpit that would be out of reach for the left hand, but to get the plane safely on the ground, you need to be able to direct the plane while simultaneously managing engine thrust. That’s gonna be hard to do with just one functioning hand. Any sidestick pilot with one hand hors de combat would, I think, be well advised to use his remaining hand to get the plane to a safe altitude/attitude/speed/location (if possible) and then eject.
Spot on. The combo of wounded pilot and still functional jet is pretty far-fetched in itself. The weapons used against aircraft tend to either miss or to produce catastrophic damage to both.
One can always imagine a just-so story where it happens. But it wouldn’t be a design consideration.
I am left handed and flew Hueys in the Army 80-85. Stick is form fitted to the right as you say. Flying with the right hand is how we were trained and just how it is done so I never thought anything about it.
When I was a flight instructor I got into airplanes with all kinds of control configurations. I personally never had an issue, and since being an instructor was a goal for a long time, I made a point of flying from both seats and experiencing as many configurations as possible early on.
For me, switching hands was never a problem (I’m right-handed, if it matters). The sight-picture from different seats was much more of a concern during takeoff and landing. When I first began flying from the right seat of a trainer airplane it felt like the instruments were a mile away, and the plane sat on the center line very differently from that position. But it all gets worked out with awareness, training and experience. After a few years instructing it never mattered what seat I was in, assuming it had a nosewheel.
Changing seats in a tandem aircraft is more of an issue, but I never was much of a tailwheel guy, so that didn’t come up as often since most tandem seat GA planes tend to be tailwheels.
All that said, I do have a favorite configuration. I like to have the stick / yoke in my right hand and the throttle in my left. So when flying a Cessna or Piper trainer, even when solo, I prefer to sit in the right seat (in Pipers this conveys a further benefit - it’s easier to control the door, which is on the right). And I much prefer a throttle quadrant to the Cessna-style “plunger”. My least favorite situation was to have a stick in my left hand and throttle in the right, which is what you get flying a Diamond Katana from the left seat. But it’s all do-able.
Side sticks, as in the Cirrus, never gave me an issue. Good use of space in a small cockpit.
When I went to the airlines I was fine with being in the right seat all the time since I came from an instructing background. I joked about refusing a captain’s upgrade because I didn’t remember how to fly from the left seat anymore.
Instead of “any sidestick pilot,” I’ll amend this to say “any pilot.” Even a center stick plane (like the F-18) will be impossible to land with one hand, due to the same problem (inability to direct the plane and manage engine thrust simultaneously with one hand).
I wouldn’t say “impossible”. Difficult? Yes, definitely. Doable in a pinch given a land runway and light winds, rather than an aircraft carrier or a blustery day? Probably.
One thing bigger, heavier aircraft have going for them in this case is more inertia and a wider range of tolerable approach/landing speeds. And because those speeds are faster than a light plane, any given wind speed or wind gust is a smaller percentage of aircraft speed.
Flying a precise approach on a breezy day involves lots of throttle jockeying and stick stirring in a Cessna. However relatively little in a Boeing. And some intermediate amount in an F-whatever.
Different thought …
Some aircraft pivot the stick right at the floor. If so, your knees can help hold the stick stationary while you momentarily reach over to bump the power up or down.
Other aircraft have two pivots, where fore/aft is hinged at the floor, but left/right is hinged up near the grip. In that case your knees could help hold pitch but not roll. Which might be a show stopper or might not.
Side stick aircraft don’t have that opportunity to use knees. But they have something even better than knees: artificial stability. When nobody’s touching the stick the damn thing goes straight. Regardless of gusts, etc. Different FBW systems have different flavors of what parameters they hold stable. But they’re all worlds different from the balancing-on-a-beachball behavior of a conventional aircraft.