i think what we see in take off and landings is the fact that AH is a computer game, and therefore limited.
It is my experience that with any computer game, after you've played for a while, you get the 'knack' and it becomes easy. I do remember that landings were a little hard when i started in Warbirds, and then they just got so easy that i rarely fluffed one, even with ridiculously steep angles and lots of energy to dump.
In AH we've got fantastically varied and unpredictable things to shoot, i.e. other people, so we get spoiled, and expect other things to surprise and challenge us too.
When it comes down to it, there just aren't enough variables, wind, etc. to make landing unpredicatable. On top of this i imagine that HTC made a deliberate decision to keep take-offs and landings relatively simple so as not to scare people away, it's an air combat game after all....
i say all of this as someone who would love to see more complicated controls on our aircraft, mixture, prop pitch, guns jamming under hi G, harder navigation, etc. but i know that's because i'm a simmer as much as a gamer.
