Here's a positive then - maybe custom skins will be treated the same as soundpacks - people can create develop and create their own skins, like now, but without necessary involvement of HTC. Skinners will be free to create custom skin packs, somebody will webhost them and you can go download whichever skin pack you like. I foresee special packs being created for each scenario, for Axis and Allies arena maps, etc.
We'd have a lot more high quality skins and people would be free to rotate them in and out of game on their own. HTC would lose the headache of skin management and people complaining about how long it takes between skin releases, why are the still crappy skins that haven't been rotated out, etc.
It'd be cool that everybody in a squad could have the same general markings on the base model plane, but with personalized nose art and ID letters, etc.
As long as the other squad members installed the same skins, everybody in the squad would see each other in their personalized A/C.
It could happen...
