BaldEagle touched on something good here, with potential. No, you can't fly the game on a phone or tablet, just like you can't play World of Warcraft on a phone or tablet. But what can you do on an app? Stay Immersed. In WoW, you can go into your auction, check out characters, chat, and basically interact in the game without killing trolls.
Back in the day, one of my favorite games to play was Motor City Online, multi player racing game, fun stuff. It had a full blown economy, buying parts, trading parts, racing for pinks, anything you could think of. Had it survived, it could easily have evolved into an economy where you could use the apps to buy parts, sell parts, manage your inventory.
It's not too far fetched to keep people addicted to a game outside of the game. There could be training courses created to teach you ACM, Flight Mechanics, History, all sorts of reasons to log in during a break, read, study, play mini games, all geared towards progressing your Main Arena or even Scenario status. Maybe along with the "all planes available" main arena, you can generate perk points to purchase your own plane, and repair it as you damage it, and out of the game you can buy parts, trade parts, improve and modify your plane.
Not saying it will or even should be done, but what BaldEagle brought up was options and a desire for expansion, frankly, anything can be done, it's a game, and you can bring new elements into a game that don't disrupt the existing format. Think about it, the game is so addicting we are looking for other reasons and ways to play it. Not a bad thing at all.
