Here's one idea:

A) Map makers and mission builders could define fixed camera views at each airfield as "Ground Control" positions. One Ground Control view per airfield.

B) Pressing some key allows you to cycle through the different ground control views.

c) Pressing Ctrl-C (or some other bound key) has the same effect as switching to a different crew position, in that the previous crew position you occupied goes to "autopilot", but rather than switching to a different position within your plane, you instead switch to the ground control "crew" you're currently monitoring.

Alternately, there can be keys bound which allow you to instantly move from an air crew position to a ground control position.

Yes, but in that case you can have the option of assigning a player to just play ground control for some side. This could also include options like allowing a player to be a Forward Air Controller who can shoot off flares, lay marker panels and pop smoke grenades to mark targets, or a operations officer in charge of vectoring flights of friendly aircraft towards unidentified radar contacts.

Additionally, planes which fall into the first four categories should divert to the nearest airfield and shouldn't bother circling prior to final approach, but should go right in to land.

Realistically, planes with damage that doesn't require them to land immediately, but which does make it more likely that they'll crash should either be diverted to a different runway or should land last so they don't risk delaying landing for the other planes using the airfield.

Badly shot up carrier aircraft shouldn't even try to land. Instead, planes which are on fire or are very damaged should attempt to ditch close to a friendly ship.

Finally, crew aboard planes which are very likely to crash on landing (e.g., landing gear inoperable) should attempt to bail out at a safe altitude over a friendly airfield or next to a friendly ship leaving just the pilot and co-pilot to try to land the plane.

Desireable, Yes, highly.
Feasible, maybe. It could make matters worse, if then regularly ships crash into another when evading.
I just made a short list as a general outline, if used it could and should be refined and tuned to cover next to any possibility. And additionaly there could be a random element added, something like stubborn-not-listening-to-you aircontroller, if desired.

And even giving any damaged plane a higher priority than an undamaged plane would be a -though small- improvment over status quo.

BTW, does the AI positively 'know' where (friendly or enemy) airfields are located (other than those predefined by its own mission waypoints)?

Simply put, AI planes are not 'aware' of airfields, be they enemy, friendly or neutral.

When taking off or landing at an airfield, they only do so because it is a pre-defined waypoint. For instance, a damaged AI plane cannot 'seek out' a nearby friendly airfield at which to land. The AI is not programmed for that kind of 'thinking'.


Aviar

That explains a lot about AI landing and critical damage behavior.

Would it be possible for the AI to "check in" with the appropriate map file ever minute or so to determine the closest airbases to the plane's current position?

Then, if the plane needs to land in a hurry, it can be programmed to fly in a direct line to the nearest airbase.

Additionally, runways for stock airfields could be given some sort of coordinates as to exactly where they start and end.

That way, when a plane needs to make an emergency landing, rather than following programmed waypoints, it would just maneuver so that it's on a heading and altitude to land at one end of the nearest airfield.

Obviously, there would need to be a bit more complexity, with things like collision avoidance routines and determining whether an airfield is friendly or hostile, to make fully automated landings work realistically, but it might be possible given the way that IL2 works.

AI emergency landing has been a problem fro day one.

1) For the landing back at a friendly field issue, perhaps, as Pursuivant mentioned, having airfield marker one can assign side to (Red Vs Blue) would allow a plane to look for friendly airfield close by to land. May still need substantial coding to achieve such AI improvement though.

2) Another aspect of AI landing is even more complex and potentially challenging to code: when a plane is in trouble and there is no airfield nearby, the AI has a choice to make - where to crash land. Right now AI plane often chooses to fly into mountain or landing into a forest - i.e. ensuring total destruction of its plane (and pilot) - rather than chancing it by picking a relatively flat field to land. This is something very natural for a human pilot but I imagine can be very hard to code into AI behavior.

Cheers,

A more simple (and feasible) solution would be an 'RTB' command combined with an "Ignore Waypoints' command. Then the AI could head directly for the pre-defined home base coordinates. In addition, the AI could even check whether there are other friendly airfields in the vicinity (I mean the take-off coordinates for other friendly flights). Remember, the AI can only be aware of locations which are pre-defined by the mission designer. If the mission designer decides to leave a 'physical' airfield to remain inactive, then it would be strange if the AI could land on it. Similarly, if the mission designer created a new airfield (not on the physical map), then it would be strange if the AI ignored it.

This would be a nice option for the FMB, either on its own or included with my idea.

If added to my idea, it would complement the idea of having the AI being able to "see" airfields, and would allow mission builders to create missions where friendly aircraft would divert around otherwise friendly airfields (to simulate things like the airfield being fogged in, bombed out, or otherwise unusable). All they'd need to do is mark a particular airfield as being "invisible" to friendly planes.

Likewise, the mission builder could make certain airfields "secret" by flagging them as being "invisible to hostile aircraft, or flag certain airfields as being unavailable to either side by making them "invisible" to all planes.

Or, if you wanted to keep it simple, any mission could automatically have AI planes which must RTP immediately try to go to their landing waypoint, or their take-off waypoint if it is different and closer. That way, all the AI would have to do is refer back to one of two waypoints, rather than having to check the map and do calculations to determine what the closest airfield is, or requiring the mission builder to determine what the plane's "home airfield" is.

Yes. Also, AI has a very tough time making realistic emergency decisions that would come naturally for a human pilot due to its limited terrain recognition ability. For example, AI planes might have the bail out just inside hostile territory rather than attempting to hold on a bit longer to reach friendly territory. Or, AI planes might have the crew bail out over the ocean when attempting to ditch is preferable.

"Intelligent" emergency decisions would require AI planes to be able to "see" and recognize areas of ocean and open flat ground which are suitable for crash landing/ditching, as well as being able to "see" front markers.

Once that's done, the flow chart as to what to do is fairly simple.

From the mission builders perspective, sure.

Though the AI always knows its exact position. Taking the coordinates for a list of airfields(which wouldn't be that long, not over 100 at least) and comparing them to see which is the shortest distance from any given AI's location(or even a whole mission full of AI) is hardly a CPU intensive calculation.

In fact, such a calculation already exists: Runway lighting.
This already determines the nearest friendly base(Try it, it only works in close proximity to airfields, otherwise they're permanently lit).
There is obviously a way to "detect" airfields, so it's quite possible it could be adapted for use by the AI.