Hmmmm....remember all those old westerns? where they had the showdowns in the street?
10 paces, turn n fire? technically speaking, weren't they ho'ing each other?
In fact...wasn't shooting a guy in the back the COWARDS way?
Ho-ing takes the dogfight out of the combat...but so does alt money pic-tarding which was also mentioned in this thread. Folks with good dogfighting skills and maneuverable planes want the game to be about dogfighting, but like the real war, the MA is about more than that. All of this whining about "Ho-ing" is just an attempt at a guilt trip to force pilots to give the advantage to pilots with higher skill levels by only engaging 'highly skilled' kills.
It's probably true that the (many) highly skilled pilots in this game would never be killed by pilot of lesser skill if it weren't for pick-tarding, and Ho-ing. So rather than be cannon fodder until I develop that kind of skill level, I'm going to shoot at what ever I have a gun solution on. (most likely I'll miss anyway)
I'm simply not good enough to give up an easy kill by NOT pulling the trigger on a bandit dumb enough to fly straight at me.
But I would suggest that is what makes the MA like the real war in that Skill level was often no guarantee of success.
Better break early.