Okay 2 of you totally misread what I typed. This is a game, not a recreation of real events. If you WANT nothing but mindless boring, but highly realistic PROBLEMS every time you take off, with NO combat, NO kills, NO rewards, then add broken instruments.
If you LIKE actually just focusing on killing the other plane, then leave them out. In AH all the pilots are equal. They start with the same stuff, and one kills the other. The battle situation, the positional advantage, and hell even the plane TYPE can determine the victor. But when you get down to gimping one player with broken instruments you're arbitrarily saying "I want the guy with WORKING instruments to win" before the fight starts.
You have to draw the line somewhere. HTC has drawn it so that AH is about flying the planes, not worrying over instruments..