If you are driving a car, there is only one common way of controlling the direction it travels, and that it the steering wheel. An aircraft also needs to be controlled, but in an extra dimension. To cater for the extra dimension of height when you are flying, a different kind of control is needed for planes. In the very beginning some aircraft did actually have a control wheel looking similar to a wheel that would have been found in an automobile of the era. The Vickers Vimy 1919 had a such a control wheel that could be turned to bank left or right.

In the 1930’s aircraft like the Tiger Moth were built with a joystick type of control. This was a very simple flight stick which could be pulled and pushed up and down and left and right and the joystick would be positioned between the pilot’s knees. The same type of control still exists today in some aircraft, some light aircraft, aerobatic planes and trainers.  Other types of planes such as military jets and large passenger jets have evolved the joystick into the flight stick. This device is a fly by wire (which means the controls are computerized and the controls are transmitted over wires and not manually by cables) control that more like the computer game joystick that we all know. The Airbus series of passenger jets is well known for using this kind of technology.

Many planes however have a flight yoke as the control column. Light aircraft such as the Cessna and large passenger jets such as the Boeing series all still use a flight yoke. The yoke is positioned in front of the pilot and can be controlled by either hand, as opposed to a flight stick that would need to be controlled on a certain side.