I have the original PC Saitek Aviator, and I love it, feel-wise it's an excellent stick, but....after only 2 weeks the auto-calibration feature on mine went really dodgy and the second throttle is now all but useless, since during flight it can do anything from just wandering between about +-10% throttle setting to losing half of the range of the axis, so it's calibrated so that the middle of the axis is at the bottom of the throw and the end of the axis is at the bottom of the throw. If I'd had it set to elevator trim I could only trim down once it went crazy. And there seems to be no way to fix the problem bar deleting a certain registry key and restarting the computer.
Saitek's tech support are now unbelievably appalling. Time was I'd have been shocked to hear someone say that, but now they've been bought out by Mad Catz they really are awful. I am IP banned from the Saitek forum, apparently. Funny that, since it told me that as I was trying to register my first ever account on there to ask for help with the Aviator. Perhaps that's how they keep the numbers down in the tech support forum. Pre-banning.
I was lucky, though, other people have had the same problems on more than one axis, including the main X and Y axes.
I was a bit concerned that the same problems were spreading to the main throttle, which would have made the whole stick useless to me, but the worst that has happened with the main throttle is the aforementioned +-10% wandering.
In the end the best solution was simply not to install the Saitek software (used JoyToKey instead for view hat mouse emulation, since that was all I used the Saitek software for anyway), since the software was what seemed to be causing the majority of the trouble (the trouble seems to come on from task-switching during play...or just completely randomly, take your pick). I'm not sure that the problem's been eliminated, though, since I haven't really flown since I uninstalled the Saitek software ages ago. It seems like the problems take a while to set in after you make a change like changing the USB port that you use, or something like that.
Another complaint is that the spring-loaded button to connect the two throttles together is really cheaply and badly made and after flying a twin about a month after buying the damn thing, mine is now stuck tied together and won't come unstuck no matter what I do from standard pushing it in up to much more delicate or much more violent means...possibly I'll have to saw the little dowel that connects from the first to the second throttle in half.
Finally, the hand rest for the stick was also really tacky, and I couldn't get the cheap screws to go into the hand rest the whole way, so it was never on tightly and it just sat there and rattled aggravatingly until I took it off.
Those are the BAD things. But, the stick itself is very nice to use. I'm probably going to replace the board that came with it with one of Leo Bodnar's boards because they're so much more reliable. What's the NEED for an auto-calibration function, especially one so useless and glitchy? It's a good job I bought the stick with the Bodnar board in mind (along with extending it with a length of PVC piping to see what a longer-throw stick is like).
To be honest, if you're not bothered with FFB or a throttle and you really need reliability, I'd go with the CH Combat Stick, since it's about the same price as the X-52 the others have been suggesting but is far more reliably made. For a cheaper and equally reliable option, you can really only buy a controller board (Leo Bodnar's BU0836 are the best option according to most) and make a stick yourself.
Here is a good thread for you made by a bloke in a similar situation.