Because I would rather have the modeling / animation guys working on more planes, cockpits, ships, vehicles, etc... I suspect all the cockpits would have to be re-done as well to include the pilot animations.

While I too what like pilot animation, to atleast have them chuck the pilot model in the cockpit with his legs, arms and feet to their controls and moving - not nessacarily all the switches then it wouldn't take that long, since I am pretty sure the pilot model is fully rigged and posed (Bailout animation for example).
Knowing the structure of the game, it would take one entry in the hier.him and maybe a few more lines of java in the java file.

War Thunder: War of planes has pilots in the cockpit (with their HOTAS animations). And it's really nice, coupled with the 6DOF. See the movies around the internet.

As long as the pilots are already modelled, mapped, textured and rigged, there's not so much work to do: throw in some simple animations and some dummy points in the cockpit (for the hands animations) and you're set.

i don't know if any remember Oleg joking about this and saying that this would not be done, because of the possibilities of having fires on board and seeing the pilot get burned, with the possibility of associated trauma a/o 'separation of personality' issues..

I dunno.... it sounds like a great idea but I worry it would totally destroy immersion. It's bad enough I have to move a joystick to move my joystick :D (If that makes any sense?). I don't want to "Play a pilot"....... in IL2 I am a pilot.

This was always a point of difference in sim racing. Especially with the tougher sims, like Grand Prix Legends, people developed preferences for whether or not they liked to see virtual characters. For many, myself included, it was easier to concentrate and balance the controls without a virtual driver's hands in the way. And all those involved was a pair of virtual hands! Many even went so far as to disable the on screen wheel (myself included), because the inherent delay and difference between your actual and on screen controller would throw off (ever so slightly) your motions.

Flight sims dont require such precise repetitive motions nor are they quite as fast paced or as demanding of precise and speedy inputs, so this is generally likely to be less of an issue. But I would say that many would nonetheless find that a virtual pilot just got in the way and broke immersion/was redundant since many people would feel no need to see a second 'them'. In that sense, as a situational awareness/thinking game, it would be even more distracting to see a virtual body obstructing things.

It would also be quite tricky to properly animate all the various motions of a pilot's hands/feet/body in a cockpit, and would obscure the view. It would be a lot of work for little gain all in all I would say, but I would of course welcome the option.

I'd love to see pilot model in the cockpit as well and pilot bailout animation too

Difficult to manage all events, but i would like the immersive first person view of a bailout. :)

For example, I like the immersive animation in tanks of red orchestra 2, when you open the tank to have a better view.

But here it is very difficult and there will be a lag between button press and animation, because the pilot has to perform a grab to this thing. In driving sims, it also has a stupid behaviour simetimes, when have to leave the stearing wheel to switch gears.

But a viewing animation without pilot, perhaps? :)