I'm going by the companies as wholes. EA is a large company that has determined subscription based games are not making the money required to support such a large company. While it seems to work out fine for HTC, they are just a small niche company that unfortunately will not grow ($ wise) very much with just subscriptions. The easy money is in the free to play with cash boxes. People are very impatient and want things now, so much so they would spend money to acquire an upgraded item now versus working for it. It is just the way it is. HTC would rake in the money if they would make the game free to play (maybe a $25 initial download fee) and then charge for perk planes. The game play would be horrible but HTC would make a killing from the "I want it now" people. Thankfully for us, HTC has not yet gone that route and we can have our nice niche product as it currently is.
P.S. I've hated EA ever since they first ruined (by bringing in imports) and then shutting down the best MMO game ever... Motor City Online 
That's what I mean. As EA is a huge company covering many types of games they can NOT be compared to HTC. They have loses in one branch that is covered by gains in another. HTC does one thing, and they do it well as they have been around over 10 years and have continued to move forward, even if it is slowly as compared to a huge conglomerate like EA. Apples and oranges, just no comparison.
F2P is completely ill suited to AH. It works great for grind games because it allows a casual player to play at its own pace, not log in for extended periods and then hop back in for a few weeks without losing his progress. Players play more grind games in F2P, but less time in each - this is opposed to the time of subscriptions, where players tended to pick one game and stick with it. The key statistic is the increase in the dramatic increase in the total number of players that log into the game. MMOs need players even if they are not paying to make the game experience of the paying ones, better.
In AH there is no grind. Everything is available starting the free 2 weeks period. The only thing you lose by unsubscribing and re-subscribing are some useless perk points and risk your handle name being taken. AH has a very small potential player base (for the flying game!, tanks be damned). Going F2P will not bring in thousands of casual players that do not even own a joystick. The typical age of an AH player is probably well above 20, even if we behave like 12 years olds. These players have no problems with owning a credit card and shelling 14.95$/month. Ignoring for a moment what it will do to gameplay, I seriously doubt going F2P will bring in lots of teenagers.
RoF has taken the microtransaction route. I don't know how well they are doing.
The only thing that can expand the circle of potential customers for AH is the ground war. This is a sad sad reality. As much as I dont like it, if we historical flight enthusiasts still want a flying game like AH, this GV crowd must be milked in order to pay for our game. What HTC could do, is separate GV and flight into two linked subscriptions. The ground war can better support F2P with transactions due to the much larger potential players base. CCP is now trying something like this in the EVE+Dust514 combination that is even a cross-platform dual game, where EVE is PC and Dust is console.
I don't have a problem with the ground war become what draws new players. I wish there was something more to it than spawn camping. Camping isn't going to hold many people once they try it. I think the game play option could be expanded for the GV crowd to really fill out a good game experience. The flight sim community is a small one, it's a tough genera to keep running ie: AWIII, FIghter Ace and so on. If a F2P for the GV section can bring in money to help support the flight sim section I think it would certainly be for the good.
