Sender: <marv@lancaironline.net> (Marvin Kaye)
To: lml
Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2002 17:13:25 -0400
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 originator="Paul Davis <pdavis@pdavis.bmc.com>"
From: "Paul Davis" <pdavis@bmc.com>
Reply-to: "Paul Davis" <pdavis@bmc.com>
Subject: Re: [LML] Re: Left Throttle, Right Stick 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 05 Jun 2002 16:12:30 EDT."
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>>>>> On Wed, 5 Jun 2002, "Sky2high" == Sky2high@aol.com wrote:

  Sky2high> Uhhh, are all left handed pilots at an advantage or is
  Sky2high> their crash rate different than that of right handers is
  Sky2high> similarly equipped airplanes?

The short answer is that no one has bothered to ask.
But it probably isn't possible to pull the data out of the noise.

Let's suppose that "wrong-handing" the controls results in a very
small performance degradation.  Further suppose that this only matters
in fairly rare situations.  (Both suppositions seem plausible.)  It
would be nearly impossible to sort through crash data and identify
a correlation -- even though it might well exist.  In any event, so
far as I know no one has attempted this.  Nor was I able to find a
single systematic study of handedness related to tasks like landing an
airplane.  This isn't my field and I don't have the resources for 
anything more than an Internet search.  That's why I asked NASA.

As I said earlier, for me this is more a matter of comfort than 
safety of flight.  But since you re-raise the point let me drag out 
something else to think about.

There was only one situation I could think of that was even roughly
analogous and where we can actually compare statistics.  That would be
gun range stats.  The mental and mechanical skills aren't precisely
those of flying, but there are similarities.  And for this sort of
thing hard numbers *are* available.  Most serious handgunners (and
I'm talking combat or defensive, NOT target) practice with BOTH, or
perhaps I say EITHER, hand.  I've *never* seen *anyone* who shot
equally well with either hand.  Can I shoot with either hand?  Sure.
I'm even fairly comfortable with my off hand.  But like most shooters 
I'm just a little bit slower and a little less accurate with the 
off-hand.

The leap I'm not willing to take is that this would transfer directly 
to flying an airplane.  But I certainly wouldn't bet against it 
either.

So until someone does a study such as running a fair number of pilots 
through simulations of things like botched landing or having a vortex 
flip them upside down on final and compares their performance with 
each hand we simply won't know.

-------------------
Paul Davis
Lancair Legacy builder
pdavis@bmc.com
Phone 713-918-1550
-------------------
Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas (Georgics)
He is fortunate who had been able to learn the causes of things