HP 8510w
Fedora 22 - MATE & Ubuntu 15.04 - Gnome
only attached devices are a USB keyboard and USB trackball

With F/A on thrust tops out at around 47. Turn F/A off and it works normally. This happened on Ubuntu15.04 - Gnome as well so I don't think it's an OS related thing.

There are no joysticks in the house so no chance it is picking up a random device. The machine specs don't say anything about a fall sensor so I don;t think that is a possibility either.

The specs of my laptop also do not specify a fall sensor/gyro, but it has one. It's easy to work out whats happening, go to options > controls > joystick, are any axis listed? And if so, are they set to throttle? Set all axes listed to nothing, hit apply and re-try. If this works, then your machine does have some kind of accelerometer and Linux is treating it as an input (js) device.

Thanks Yoda, that was it.

I set mine up to control my ship with it once. It was kind of fun for a few minutes but utterly impractical.

Huh, interesting. What axes are displayed?