If you are new to flight simulators, you may be wondering what the question means? Yoke or Flight Stick – it actually is referring to the main control that is used in the cockpit of aircraft that are flying today or did fly in the past and you would like to fly as part of your flight simulator. Obviously the point of using a flight simulator is to have the most realistic experience that you can, and an important part of that is to make sure the control you are using matches the control that is actually in the aircraft.

You may not realise it, but these days some aircraft use the traditional flight yoke and some use a flight stick. In our home cockpit, we can match the flight yoke with a replica flight simulator yoke and match the flight stick with a joystick.

Although most passenger jets still use a yoke, there are a number of well known jets that have moved to a flight stick. The most famous example is the Airbus, that started the use of a flight stick or ’side stick’ as Airbus refer to them. Airbus have retained the side stick that uses the fly by wire technology with the more recent introduction of the giant A380.  The biggest competitor to Airbus, Boeing is sticking with the more traditional flight yoke, even in its latest models. Other types of aircraft that use a flight stick instead of a flight yoke include military jets including the F-16, aerobatic aircraft and some trainers.

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