It is cool, no doubt about it. But I have to think its mostly psychological, because I haven't really been able to ID any different skins on opposing planes yet. Even if they are on my own team I only get a fleeting glimpse of the skin.
How about enabling External View for ALL planes (incl fighters) as long as you are on the ground? I'd love to be able to do walk-arounds of all the new skins. Going offline and looking at them just ain't the same - it would be much better to allow this when online. And the hangar external view doesn't allow you to move your viewpoint around the plane.
AFAIK it would be more realistic too, weren't pilots in the habit of performing walkarounds as part of the preflight inspection?
I really can't think of any drawbacks to this idea - no unfair advantage is gained if you are on the ground.