Yes, planes fly with dead pilots, but without maneuvers and shooting at me.

Wings and other parts of the planes remain for a while in the position where they´re shot off and then very slowly "move" down at a regular speed , without any other movement (other direction).

Oh, misunderstood what you meant.. how do you know the pilot was dead then?

pilot was dead in external view.

Ahh Ok.. you do realize that the little guy in there isn't really alive right? He's not real. Neither is the plane, the sky and the ground. Its all a bunch of numbers running in a giant equation.. and if a certain number comes up a certain animation is played.. So, if the "pilot" appears to be dead in external view, the problem or "Huge Bug" as you put it isn't that the pilot is a brain eating zombie, its that the wrong animation is being displayed..

On a more humorous note, I LOLed hard yesterday on Syndicate. Climbed after lotsa dots at 2-3000m and when I got there I found trees. :D

I remember a story of a glider pilot that died after his oxygen system failed at 30.000 feet or higher. The plane continued flying for hours and was found many many miles away... I also remember Closterman writing about flying next to fellow pilot that was dead or unconscious and he flew on a long time before crashing. Didn't Closterman try to push his wing up? Read it 25 years ago ;) I really like the fact that planes with dead pilots don't plunge right into the ground immediately - even though they often do!

Animation is ok, I killed the pilot with bullets through the canopy. It´s a similar problem to the one when planes continued flying without wings, which has already been fixed.