Boeing 737-800 Yoke for Infinite Flight

The short-haul workhorse, flown properly

Walk down a row of gates almost anywhere on Earth and the same silhouette keeps appearing: the Boeing 737-800, nose-high on its short gear, CFM56 nacelles flattened along the bottom, waiting out a quick turnaround before the next sector. It became the best-selling member of the 737NG family by doing unglamorous work brilliantly, and in Infinite Flight it plays the same part — the jet you pick when you want to fly legs, not just scenery. A Boeing 737-800 yoke for Infinite Flight completes that picture. SkyYoke turns the iPhone in your hand into the control column, so the airliner that defined the modern short-haul grind gets hand-flown the way Boeing designed it to be.

And the -800 rewards hand-flying. Where its great rival is steered from a sidestick through flight-control computers, the 737 stays a pilot's airplane: deliberate rotation off the runway, honest control forces, small early corrections on a gusty final. On a touchscreen, that whole conversation collapses into a thumb on a slider. Put the phone between your hands instead and it comes back.

Why crews keep choosing this airplane

The 737-800 seats roughly 160–189 passengers and hauls them on short and medium routes all day, every day. It is the workhorse of low-cost giants like Ryanair and a fixture in mainline fleets worldwide, powered by a pair of CFM56 turbofans — engines with a reputation for simply running, cycle after cycle. Up front, it kept what Airbus traded away: the classic Boeing control column, a yoke the pilot physically flies rather than a stick the computer interprets.

That identity carries straight into the 737-800 in Infinite Flight's fleet. It is a jet that asks to be rotated, trimmed and flown — which is exactly the kind of aircraft a motion yoke was made for. (Prefer the shorter fuselage? The same approach works for the 737-700.)

A 737-800 yoke for Infinite Flight, made from motion

SkyYoke's Motion Yoke does not read raw rotation angles. It tracks the gravity vector relative to a neutral you set, which makes it grip-independent: rest the phone flat on your lap like a tray-table yoke or hold it upright like the column itself, and banking and pitching behave identically. There is no gimbal lock to wander into, the tilt range is configurable from 15° to 60° of lean for full deflection, and a one-tap Recenter captures a fresh neutral the moment you settle into a new position.

Every axis then runs through its own tuning chain, so the -800 can feel as heavy or as eager as you like:

• Sensitivity — how much aileron and elevator a given lean commands.
• Dead zone — a quiet center, rescaled so full travel still reaches the stops.
• Expo curve — gentle around neutral for cruise, full authority at the edges for the flare.
• Inversion and trim — match the response to your hands, then trim out the climb.
• Smoothing — a low-pass filter that damps jitter without dulling intent.

If you would rather keep the phone still, the Touch Joystick swaps motion for an on-screen, self-centering pad: 1:1 response, springs back to center the instant you let go. Either control draws the roll and pitch you are commanding right on the screen.

Takeoff thrust, held reverse, and the 40-knot handoff

The -800's day is bracketed by two throttle moments: standing the thrust up at the start of the roll, and pulling it through idle into reverse seconds after the mains touch. SkyYoke's smart throttle handles both with a single lever. Push forward for 0–100% thrust, with a haptic tick marking the idle detent on the way down. The lever even recolors by role — blue and green for forward thrust, amber for braking, red for reverse — so a glance tells you what your hand is doing.

After touchdown, pull into the red zone at 40 kts or above and the app engages held reverse thrust: Infinite Flight expects reverse to be held continuously, and the lever holds it for you while you keep the nose tracking the centerline with the self-centering rudder bar. As the rollout decays below 40 kts, the very same travel hands off to proportional wheel braking, easing you to taxi speed. In the air the red zone is locked out entirely, with a warning banner and a repeating haptic — no accidental in-flight reverse, ever.

The 737-800 at a glance

Aids for flying an airliner like an airline

Short-haul flying is procedural flying, and SkyYoke surrounds the yoke with the cues a 737 crew would brief. On the Performance screen you set your loadout against a live MTOW bar, pick the runway, and read headwind and crosswind components pulled from in-sim weather; the app then estimates V1, VR, V2, VREF and VAPP from the aircraft's profile, scaled by weight and density altitude, and sanity-checks the runway length.

In the cruise, the HUD keeps IAS, altitude, heading and vertical speed in live chips while Airbus-style PFD tapes add a speed trend arrow and cyan selected-value bugs. The systems panel walks real flows — battery, APU, engine start, lights, autobrake, cabin signs — and only shows the switches this aircraft actually exposes. And because a 250-knot bust below 10,000 ft is the classic airliner mistake, the Violation Avoidance System arms itself about 2,000 ft above the band and watches the limit while the autopilot flies.

From the couch to V1 in five steps

1. Join the same Wi-Fi. Your iPhone runs SkyYoke; a second device — typically an iPad — runs Infinite Flight.
2. Enable Infinite Flight Connect. Flip it on in Infinite Flight's settings; SkyYoke discovers the simulator on the network automatically.
3. Bind the axes once. Map roll, pitch, throttle and yaw in Infinite Flight's Controllers settings — the in-app setup guide walks through every step.
4. Load the 737-800. Pick it from Infinite Flight's fleet, push back, and feel the taxi rumble build in your palm as you roll.
5. Fly. Recenter at the hold-short line, stand the thrust up, and ease the phone back when you hear the Rotate callout.