Put otherwise, in the context of a PC scenario, air units other than "the best" are often - not merely poor, but actively harmful, as in a direct prestige drain.
In the context of the game, the air battle is very binary - either your unit is good enough to take care of itself... or it isn't.
Units that aren't only weigh you down. You are better off without them, so just suicide them for that one time gain. Any effort spent on keeping them alive and using them as anything else than throw away expendable resources is more or less wasted. Expensive units where you more or less have to use elite replacements just adds to the knife's edge.
The window of equality is so very very narrow as to be almost non-existent.
Sending bombers unescorted is suicide. Even fighter-bombers are useless except against the very weakest of enemies. Later, either you have five-star super-elite ultra hi-tech fighters or you don't have fighters at all.
This is markedly different from the ground war, where you can appreciate many more sorts of units. There are many more roles with actual value. The value of and expected lifetime of non-elite units (and even garbage units) is much much higher.
If you ask me why this is so, my number one reason would be the fact air units can instantly use the whole army's sighting range, identify the optimal (read weakest) target each and every time, and then (nearly) always zip across the map to reach that target.
Now, my questions
1. To the devs: Will the air battle model be different in PC2?
2. To everyone: How can we make more sorts of air units valuable without adding complexity or clutter?
