Many aircraft have wing flaps, controlled by a switch or a mechanical lever or in some cases are fully automatic by computer control, which alter the shape of the wing for improved control at the slower speeds used for take-off and landing. The most commonly available control is a wheel or other device to control elevator trim, so that the pilot does not have to maintain constant backward or forward pressure to hold a specific pitch attitude (other types of trim, for rudder and ailerons, are common on larger aircraft but may also appear on smaller ones). In addition to the primary flight controls for roll, pitch, and yaw, there are often secondary controls available to give the pilot finer control over flight or to ease the workload.

Main articles: Trim tab, Flap (aircraft), Air brake (aircraft), Spoiler (aeronautics), Leading edge slats, and Variable-sweep wing Instead, the pilot just grabs the lifting surface by hand (using a rigid frame that hangs from its underside) and moves it. In ultralight aircraft and motorized hang gliders, for example, there is no mechanism at all. In some aircraft, the control surfaces are not manipulated with a linkage. Flight control has long been taught in such fashion for many decades, as popularized in ab initio instructional books such as the 1944 work Stick and Rudder. The basic pattern for modern flight controls was pioneered by French aviation figure Robert Esnault-Pelterie, with fellow French aviator Louis BlГ©riot popularizing Esnault-Pelterie's control format initially on Louis' BlГ©riot VIII monoplane in April 1908, and standardizing the format on the July 1909 Channel-crossing BlГ©riot XI. Some are directly connected to the control surfaces using cables, others (fly-by-wire airplanes) have a computer in between which then controls the electrical actuators.Д®ven when an aircraft uses variant flight control surfaces such as a V-tail ruddervator, flaperons, or elevons, to avoid pilot confusion the aircraft's flight control system will still be designed so that the stick or yoke controls pitch and roll conventionally, as will the rudder pedals for yaw. Centre sticks also vary between aircraft. There are yokes where roll is controlled by rotating the yoke clockwise/counterclockwise (like steering a car) and pitch is controlled by tilting the control column towards you or away from you, but in others the pitch is controlled by sliding the yoke into and out of the instrument panel (like most Cessnas, such as the 152 and 172), and in some the roll is controlled by sliding the whole yoke to the left and right (like the Cessna 162). The control yokes also vary greatly amongst aircraft. throttle controls to control engine speed or thrust for powered aircraft.rudder pedals, or the earlier, pre-1919 'rudder bar', to control yaw, which move the rudder left foot forward will move the rudder left for instance.The roll is controlled by moving the ailerons (or activating wing warping on some very early aircraft designs) when the yoke is turned or deflected left or right, and the pitch is controlled by moving the elevators when the yoke is moved backwards or forwards. a control yoke (also known as a control column), centre stick or side-stick (the latter two also colloquially known as a control or joystick), governs the aircraft's roll and pitch.

Generally, the primary cockpit flight controls are arranged as follows:

Mechanical flight control system