Welcome to the dark side. Planetside 2 has a relatively small, but dedicated and very vocal community of full-time ESF pilots. I've been met with a lot of negativity when proposing this idea.
https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/...ground.179771/
I think it is a much needed change, since it would make the air-ground-game
much easier to balance. ESFs have too much freedom in terms of when to attack, and the resulting balance has left them completely detached from the core gameplay. They may have some impact on the battles, but their impact decreases rapidly as the number of ground troops increases.
That said, I think the ESF flight model is great, but SOE needs to understand that what makes people love the ESF can easily be replicated and improved upon in an arena format, such as the battle islands. It's all about the A2A gameplay for the ESF pilots; even if they weren't completely denied from large battles, attacking ground as an ESF is mind-numbingly boring.