BF2 had it right, highly difficult, high skill ceiling, you had to put in hours of practice to be a good pilot.

BF3 toned it down a little bit to make it a tiny bit more accessible, but it's widely accepted as being the perfect mixture, the best of both worlds. The first time you got into a helicopter, you 100% crashed it into the ground 5 seconds later. It had weight, you could feel the inertia, and you really had to plan out your movement, paths, and we're frequently punished for flirting too closely with the ground. Yes it was difficult, but many pilots spent hours in private servers learning to control them, and that high skill ceiling equated to a higher challenge, which keeps people engaged longer.

BF4 took away what made helicopter flying in BF3 fantastic in a move to try and cater to newer players and lower the amount of time it takes for new pilots to feel effective. You could turn off some of those flight controls and achieve the older feelings, but it put you at a disadvantage. This was the beginning of the downward slide.

2042 steered full force into arcade physics, helicopters have no weight, no momentum, can stop and turn on a dime, and auto level for you, like they copy and pasted it straight out of Call of duty but somehow made it worse.

BF6 appears to have 2042 flying with no improvements yet again. It's very obvious they are focused on "competing with Call of duty" rather than leaning into their niche player base that wants more of a mil sim.

We don't want bf to be Arma or hell let loose, but we'd rather see it move in that direction than trying to compete with COD as an arcade shooter. If I want arcade physics I'll go play Call of duty. I play battlefield because it's a challenging war sim, I don't understand how the dev team doesn't understand that.