Karnak, I agree about the attitude, but in practice such balance is not needed in the arenas at least. Every plane's matched opponent is itself flown by the other country. What is the opponent to the 262? another 262.
Generally, I can't see the fuss about un-perking planes. If anything, I think the game will benefit from having even more perked models. The cost can be symbolic, from 1-4 perks. Does anyone really cannot afford flying Spit 14 nearly exclusively? That is, unless he just logged into the arena for the first time? Perk points are garbage as it is, but I find it more interesting when they have a value. Yet, players save thousands of perk points that they spend on nothing, or simply have nothing to spend on.
When finally someone decides to cough some precious perks and roll out a perked ride, the crowd response is "A PERKED RIDE!! ZOMG!". If half the planes were perked, including many of the popular ones (P51D, 109K, 190D, La7) you would not see such an attitude. I stress that a perk price of "1" is sufficient.