Can left-handed people be fighter pilots?

Question

I am thinking about becoming a fighter pilot and am wondering if they will accomodate me with my left-handedness. I know that fighter aircraft are different from any other aircraft because the throttle is on the left side and yoke on the right, whereas in any other aircraft, this doesnt matter. In training will the make me learn right-handed?

Answer 1

Yes.  You learn to adjust and compensate.

Answer 2

Certainly, to pilot an aircraft, you will be busy with both hands, it is really a matter of just doing things by routine, most aircraft carry controls on both sides, left is normally the pilots seat, and right is the co-pilot. Pilots log a lot of time in the copilot seat before moving to the other side!! Flying is similar to driving a car in that your routine tasks become second nature and require very little concentartion to perform.

Answer 3

Yeah... duh

Doesn't matter which is dominant... matters if you can actually fly the thing or not

Answer 4

I was.

Answer 5

About 40% of all pilots are left handed compared to about 10% of the rest of the population.

All of the pilots in a former company I worked for (ex fighter pilots included) were left handed.

I found that by being left-handed, I could switch from left to right seats, and from yoke (left hand) and throttle (right hand) to throttle (left hand) and stick (right hand) with no problems at all.

In training, you will simply learn to do certain tasks with certain hands.  Manipulating a throttle or stick is nowhere near as complex as learning to write.

Answer 6

they won't care as long as you can learn to fly right handed. Many left handed people are fairly adapted to using their right hand for complicated tasks like this already because of the right-hand centric world for the most part.

Answer 7

Since I'm not a fighter pilot, you may have to stretch this to see if it will cover:  When I learned to fly, I learned in aircraft with a control yoke.  This meant that most of the time I operated the throttle and (later) prop controls with my right hand, and I used my left hand on the control yoke.  Later in my flying career, I began flying aircraft with a control stick which now meant that my left hand controlled throttle and prop, and I now used my right hand on the stick, to control the attitude of the aircraft.  I was a bit concerned about making the swap, but it turned out to be no problem.  The bottom line then, to me, is that it doesn't seem to make a tremendous amount of difference which hand controls which controls.  BTW, I am right handed and not particularly ambidextrious.