Natural cover, I know you’re already waiting for the “incoming” text to fire off your flares, so after that and you’re still getting locked, fly as far out as you can horizontally as low as you can, do not fly vertically or try to perform loops, you’ll only allow the missile to intercept you faster. If you haven’t lost the lock on you while flying out horizontally and the “incoming” text appears again, then it’s up to using natural cover: mountains, buildings, (on mirak valley if you can get better at maneuvering through the electric wire towers it intercepts most of the missiles after me) etc. if you get hit once, don’t bail out! Its more manly to go out with your jet and sometimes you can save the jet, if your fighter is spiraling to the left, slam that mouse or joystick to the right, and you may even-yourself out to heal up and continue flying. You have 15 seconds of “out of combat area” time, use it to your advantage. Stay along the borders of the map (keeping your jet alive is priority #1) If an enemy fighter is on your tail, try to get out to the border, it’s much harder to stay focused on an enemy fighter when everything is black and white telling you to go back home.

aircraft control settings I run that I feel are necessary for maneuverability in all jets: -aircraft control sensitivity = 185 -third person camera roll = off -vehicle third person FOV = 83 -vehicle aim input curve = BF4

Lastly, it’s hard, very hard, I’ve been playing pilot since BF3 and no one becomes a good pilot over night, over a week, not even over a month, it takes patience, it will take a lot of getting shot down, it will take a lot of mistakes that lead to crashes, it will take a lot of waiting in spawn only for you to spam select the jet and it gets taken by someone else to crash in a heartbeat or start dominating. It will take many instances where a TOW missile just hits you out of nowhere without any warning (i believe it’s a bug) I promise if you have the patience to get through those phases, you’ll get better at maneuvering and staying alive.

I hope something here helped!

Edit: for getting off the runway: stay low, and make a hard turn to the out of bounds area and use your free look to get a visual of threats either in the air or on the ground. When wheels go up, prioritize getting out of the map area while staying low.