Airfoillabs C172 NG Digital won’t calibrate correctly with Airbus sidestick axes

AFL C172 NG Digital + Airbus sidestick axis swap (MSFS)

Ron — I’ve seen this exact “Axis 1 / Axis 2 keeps flipping” behavior when the aircraft’s internal calibration is fighting MSFS’s own controller bindings (and sometimes when the stick is also being seen as a second device/profile). The fix is usually to make sure only one place is doing the axis assignment/calibration.

Step-by-step (try in this order)

1. Start with a clean MSFS controller profile for the Airbus sidestick.
   • In MSFS Controls, select the Airbus sidestick and create a new blank profile (or duplicate your current one and strip it down).
   • Remove/clear any duplicate bindings for Aileron Axis and Elevator Axis (make sure each is bound only once).
   • Also check there aren’t any bindings on other devices that could be “helping” (yoke, gamepad, keyboard helpers, etc.). It only takes one stray elevator/aileron axis on another device to make calibration look broken.
2. Temporarily set the AFL aircraft’s calibration to defaults (if the AFL tablet/manager has a “reset” option for controls/calibration).
   • The goal here is to clear whatever it stored while it was confused.
   • Then restart the flight (I know it’s annoying, but it matters for some add-ons that save state).
3. Test in MSFS first, before touching AFL calibration.
   • Load the default Asobo C172 (or any default aircraft) and confirm your sidestick is normal: roll moves roll, pitch moves pitch.
   • If it’s wrong in a default aircraft too, then it’s not an AFL issue — it’s a binding/profile/device issue.
4. If defaults are OK, go back to the AFL C172 and calibrate once.
   • Do one axis at a time: leave the stick centered, then full left/right only for roll; then full forward/back only for pitch.
   • Make sure you’re not “touching” the other axis while doing one (sidesticks are easy to slightly cross-axis without noticing).
5. If it still flips, unplug/replug the sidestick and check if MSFS created a second device entry.
   • Sometimes Windows/MSFS will show what looks like the same controller twice (or as a “new” device after a driver/USB change), and each one may have its own profile/bindings.
   • If you see duplicates, pick the one that actually responds and delete/ignore the other profile.

A couple quick “gotchas” to check

• Make sure you don’t have both “Aileron Axis” and “Ailerons (left/right)” or other legacy bindings set at the same time.
• If you use any external mapper/driver software for the Airbus stick, try disabling it just for testing (anything that outputs a virtual controller can confuse add-on calibrators).

A few questions so I don’t send you in circles

1. Which exact Airbus sidestick is it (Thrustmaster TCA Sidestick Airbus Edition, or something else)?
2. Are you on MS Store MSFS or Steam MSFS, and are you running any external controller tools (Thrustmaster TARGET, vJoy, SPAD, FSUIPC, etc.)?
3. Does the axis behave correctly in a default aircraft (Asobo C172) right now?
4. Where are you doing the calibration — in MSFS only, in the AFL tablet/manager only, or both?

Answer those and I can tell you the most likely single change to make (and where to make it) so it stops swapping Axis 1/Axis 2.