I'm sure there will be custom configurations available

I asked Anton that a while back and he said there is only one controller configuration, but said it had the best configurations for the gamepad.

Cockpit Controlls
 

Is the Cockpit like in Enemy Engaged Comanche vs. Hokum.where you can controll all the switches and buttons, with mouse.On xbox 360 controller it would be easy if you look at your panel with the view stick and a "press Y" button,to lock on panel ,it should stay where your looking at the panel unless you "press y" again and let use the anlolog stick as mouse and x button switch buttons and on or off.You dont need any Keys,just a control panel.Oh and After IL2 Birds of prey, can you please make a WW1 sim,with same engine,Hence call it "IL2 Kite Fights"
.Would be way simple,compared to WW2 sim.

I doubt it will be that much of a sim.

It would be nice to have that option, but I wouldn't want it to be a requirement. Most people don't want to read a flight manual and practically learn to fly a plane to play the game. However, it would be nice to be able to progress to that if the game could offer controller only sequences and then the point and click option. Doubt we'll see it though, most pc flight sims don't even offer that.

I wondered that as well. Instead of making all of the controls on the gamepad just put a reticle in the middle of the screen, look down at your cockpit controls, place it on the device you want to use, and then tap A or something to use it.

I know it would be time consuming to teach yourself all of the controls, but it would be neat. Wouldn't expect anything like that soon though like Raw Kryptonite said.

I'm surprised 360 games haven't made use of the Messenger Keyboard thing that you can plug in to the control pad. Plenty of buttons on there that can be assigned to various functions.....

I was thinking the same thing since the ps3 has the same peripheral.

Will we be able to go into first person view when we are the bombadier or be able to use the bomb sights?

Same here. Sell the game with the keypad like some Wii games do. (sorry to mention the "W" word in here.)
Both the PS3 and 360 can use USB keyboards as well, they could resort to that if they really need to figure the extra buttons.
With my PC, I use Pinnacle to set up the 360 controller for games. Since it doesn't let you set up sub-menus the way a game developer can, it lets you assign some buttons as shift keys. Hit the shift, you've got full use of all other buttons all over again. If we had a shift, you could have settings for plane management, like flaps, landing gear, prop pitch, lights, open/close cockpit, landing hook...things of that nature that you don't need such fast access too, but using sub-menus might be too slow. I do like radial submenus though. You can cram a helluva lot on a controller these days.