Totally change the flight controls make it almost all mouse and key board and see how many flyer's complain. Took me almost a year of my time to learn to gv well. :bheadcomplaints about the new system are legit totally wasted my time and money gving for that period of time. Its a crap update and did not in any way improve the ground war. Oh its more realistic all the flyer's say. Ya well take your zoom capacity away watch the tears flow. I'm sure a lot off ww2 fighter pilots used binocs while fighting. 
Sorry to tell ya this Bub, but not a single aircraft in AH has a zoom ability. All they have is the ability to narrow the field of view so as to get to approximately 1x magnification. Normally we are flying around at something like 0.2x magnifcation.
The tank sights are now historical, something the fliers have had to deal with since day one, and have fixed zoom settings of 2.5x to 6x magnification, depending on the tank. The Tiger, Panther and Firefly have two settings available.
I'm sorry if a little realism is spoiling your 5 klick kill shots, but you shouldn't have been able to do those in the first place.