This may be a silly question but I was wondering for a while...How does a pilot and FO work with the linked controls such as rudder, elevator and aileron controls? Is there a switch that turns-off one side while the other is in control? or is it simply by protocol, one pilot will completely goes hands-off while the other has the control? If so, then what about accidental interferences? thankssri

Hi sri777,You have 2 kinds of airplanes, the ones with both yoke and rudder linked together and the others not linked. As a matter of fact the only one I can think of is the airbus family where the 2 mini-yokes are exactly like computer joystick thus indenpendant to a mechanical point of view.Normally the Pilot Flying (PF) is the only one with the hands on the control while the Pilot Not Flying (PNF) is keying the radio and crosschecking the PF. When switching commands for any reason there must an aural annoncement (like "You have controls" or "I have controls") to be sure both pilots know who's in charge of flying the aircraft.Mechanicaly linked controls are very usefull because the PNF actually knows the PF inputs on the controls just by looking/feeling the controls mooving. For example, when landing the aircraft with crosswind, you actually see the yoke tilted to the wind direction so you can be sure the PF is making the right correction (when you are a Captain flying with a roocky copilot that's conforting ;-))In the otherhand in the Airbus family both joysticks are disconnected so you can't know for sure what the other's doing, a LOT of dual inputs happened with the A320 because of that feature, so much Airbus added a visual/aural warning on the glareshield to prevent this...Hope it will help,altack