I am a pilot. Steering with yoke or a stick. With either one, pull back to go up, push forward to go down. Move left to turn left, move right to turn right for ailerons, all coordinated with the foot pedals that control the rudder.
Rather over simplified, though there's some truth in that. For instance if you pull back to go up, it works for a while, quite a long while if you don't pull back very much or add enough power for climb. Push to go down works, often (always, initially), but depending on a lot of factors can soon just cause a bit of speedup and level you off, or at least reduce your descent a lot.
I'll stop there, though there's a lot more, including the transitional behavior of control pressure changes on the aircraft vs. steady state. In any case, I still stand by this:
though none of them "steer" in the automotive sense
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Get your facts straight. Only the helo's in the Coast Guard had roll up & down windows 'cause they had to land on the water. The fixed wing aircraft did have blackout night shades tho, so on those long flights to the Arctic they could get some shuteye.
There have been quite a number of light aircraft, especially in the '30s and '40s, that had rollup windows, even using an automotive mechanism to do so.
If you must make such statements, at least please don't make it sound like ALL aircraft are that way. It may well be true "in the Coast Guard," though -- your statement was just ambiguous enough that I'm not sure which way you meant that.
The smaller fighter type aircraft had and still have "sticks".
Yes, and some do, indeed, have sidesticks today. But there are still quite a few light aircraft that use sticks but not many that have gone to "fly-by-wire" to be able to use sidesticks.
Eventually all aircraft will be unmanned.
That would surprise me a great deal. While it
may eventually be true of most or all COMMERCIAL aircraft, too many folks enjoy doing the actual flying to give up control of all aircraft, not to mention the considerable extra expense and uselessness for a light aircraft flown for sport or fun. A joystick got its name for a reason.
Too often I think many people forget that aviation goes WA-A_A_AAY beyond just airlines and military. There's much more to it.