I was just watching the CBS Early Show and the weather guy took a ride on an Air Force plane that can reportedly reach the highest altitude of any plane built; 70,000 feet.
Aside from the cool photos which looked more like they were taken from the space shuttle than an airplane (they clearly showed the curvature of the Earth) this got me to thinking about the 163 altitude challenge on these boards a few moths ago. I personally took the 163 to 94,000 feet during that challenge and if the plane hadn't dissapeared (it just totally went away at 90,000 feet) I likey would have gone higher. So I did some digging and found out on Century of Flight that the absolute ceiling of the Me 163 was 54,000 feet.
I understand this is a trivial matter and that practical application in the game makes this irrelevant but considering the quest for accuracy found in this forum in particular I thought it worth thowing out for consideration as a fix. What I don't know is if this is related to the 163's particular flight model or if it's related to AH's atmospheric modeling (if they even do that?). Maybe this was already fixed in one of the recent updates? It would be interesting to see more of the plane-set tested against absolute ceilings to see if there's a commonality here or if this is an isolated incedent.