obvious when you have played a few ACs, but noteworthy when playing your first one:
try switching to another types of plane (Air-Air, Air-Ground, Multirole) if it doesn’t work with a specific model (e.g. lots of ground-targets, A-10 or Su-32 can make a huge difference over, say, Typhoon/EF2000).
Consider stability at low speed for maximum manouverability when you don’t have the right plane type for a mission (because you can gun some targets down by divebombin… diveMGing the hell out of them, if situation allows that).