"Well, now you do," Yamato says, just a touch awkwardly. "Back home, I've been eking out whatever time I could get on Yokota Base's sims, but they -- don't usually even let people do that. And they don't let you get into an actual fighter unless you're part of the air force."

That is to say, he could (and did) leverage Grandfather Michel's friendship with the base commander enough to be allowed to use the sims during maintenance hours, but unless and until he actually gets into fighter pilot training, there's no way anyone's letting him in an actual craft. Yamato's fairly sure that'd be illegal.

"Hence, you know." Yamato's already mentioned to Cassian that he applied to enter fast-track fighter pilot training a while back.