Airbus A318 Joystick for Infinite Flight

Small jet, big character

Every Airbus fan keeps a soft spot for the runt of the family. The A318 is the A320 with the middle taken out — the shortest fuselage in the lineup, a cabin of roughly 107 to 132 seats, and a reputation for getting into airports its bigger siblings can only overfly. In Infinite Flight it is the kind of jet you hand-fly on purpose, which means the controls matter far more than they would on a ten-hour autopilot cruise. That is exactly where an Airbus A318 joystick for Infinite Flight earns its keep: SkyYoke turns the iPhone you already own into a wireless sidestick, a gated Airbus thrust lever and a rudder bar for the simulator running on your other device. Nothing to buy, nothing to plug in — two devices on the same Wi-Fi is the whole rig.

Meet the Baby Bus

Pilots and spotters call the A318 the Baby Bus, and the nickname has stuck for a reason. It is the smallest member of the A320 family, built for short, dense city pairs and powered by two underwing turbofans. Its party trick is genuinely famous: the type is certified for the steep approach into London City Airport, a descent profile most airliners are simply not approved to fly. What matters most for our purposes, though, sits up front — the A318 carries the very same sidestick fly-by-wire flight deck as the A320 and the rest of its siblings, so it flies like a familiar Airbus that happens to be lighter on its feet. In Infinite Flight's fleet, that makes it a favorite for pilots who would rather fly an approach than monitor one.

Why your phone is a natural A318 joystick

There is a reason this pairing feels right. Nobody wrestles a yoke in an A318; the pilot rests one hand on a small sidestick and makes deliberate, economical inputs. A phone held in one hand is far closer to that picture than any desk-mounted column. SkyYoke's Motion Yoke mode reads the gravity vector against a neutral you set — not raw rotation angles — so it is grip-independent: rest the phone flat on your lap like a sidestick on an armrest, or hold it upright, and both work without gimbal lock ever biting. You decide how far the phone leans for full deflection (anywhere from 15° to 60°), and a one-tap recenter captures a fresh neutral whenever you shift in your seat. Prefer glass to gravity? The Touch Joystick is an on-screen, self-centering pad that maps 1:1 and springs back the instant your thumb lifts.

Every axis then passes through its own conditioning chain, so the stick can be as docile or as direct as you want:

• Sensitivity — overall gain, set independently for pitch, roll, yaw and brake.
• Dead zone — a quiet center, rescaled so full travel still reaches full deflection.
• Expo curve — soft around neutral for small flare corrections, firm out at the edges.
• Inversion, trim and smoothing — flip an axis, bias it, and damp hand tremor away.

Underneath, a 60 Hz control loop with change-detection and rate limiting keeps inputs flowing without flooding the network, and a link watchdog reconnects automatically if your Wi-Fi hiccups mid-descent.

A gated Airbus quadrant, applied automatically

The real jet's thrust levers click through gates, and so does SkyYoke's. Because the A318 is an Airbus type, the app automatically swaps its smart throttle for a gated quadrant — REV FULL, REV, IDLE, CLIMB, FLX·MCT and TOGA — with a haptic tick each time the lever crosses a gate. Push to FLX·MCT or TOGA for departure, pull back into CLIMB when it is time, and confirm every detent by feel while your eyes stay on the flying.

The lever also stays smart about context. On the ground at 40 knots or more, pulling into the red zone engages held reverse thrust — Infinite Flight requires reverse to be held, so the lever holds it for you. Below 40 knots the same zone becomes proportional wheel braking for the rollout, and in the air reverse is blocked outright, with a warning banner and a repeating haptic so it can never happen by accident. The lever even recolors by role: blue and green for forward thrust, amber for braking, red for reverse.

A318 quick reference

One table, everything that matters about the airframe and how SkyYoke maps it:

Instruments and aids for short, busy sectors

A jet built for city hops spends its whole life climbing, descending and threading terminal airspace — exactly where you want information close to your thumbs. SkyYoke draws live IAS, altitude, heading and vertical-speed chips right above the controls, alongside a ground/air phase chip and a spoiler annunciator, so the numbers you would normally glance across the room for are already in your hand.

Before departure, the Performance screen estimates V1, VR and V2 for your actual weight and the day's density altitude, checks your runway, and arms spoken callouts so "V1" and "rotate" sound at the right moments on the roll. Climbing out of a busy hub, the TCAS scope keeps multiplayer traffic categorized and visible, while the Violation Avoidance System stands guard over the 250-knot band whenever the autopilot is engaged — clamping the speed target or managing energy on a fast descent. Every one of these is a simulator aid built on estimates: helpful in Infinite Flight, never a substitute for real avionics and never a guarantee.

First flight in five steps

1. Join the same Wi-Fi. The iPhone running SkyYoke and the device running Infinite Flight must share one network.
2. Enable Infinite Flight Connect. Flip it on in Infinite Flight's settings so the simulator accepts an external controller.
3. Bind the axes once. Map pitch, roll, throttle and yaw in Infinite Flight's Controllers menu — SkyYoke's setup guide walks through every step.
4. Pick the A318. Select the Baby Bus from Infinite Flight's fleet and load your flight.
5. Connect and fly. SkyYoke discovers the simulator automatically; tilt for the stick, push the gated lever toward TOGA, and feel the detents tick under your thumb.