I made it in anger when I played a sidescrolling flight "simulator" on my phone in which the plane didn't behave anything like a plane! I figured "how hard can it be" and started learning a lot about how planes fly. It turned out there was a level of abstraction that was just right. Too unrealistic felt static and unsatisfying. Too realistic was difficult to calibrate for fun gameplay.
What's not mentioned in that article is that a couple months later I tried switching from modeling the plane as a point to modeling it as two separate wings attached by a rigid stick. It was a nightmare to get into a shape that played well, though I'm sure someone more skilled than I would be able to do it.
My inspiration was a fun game on 1980s intellivision!
That side view game had momentum and stalling airplane physics that aren't in any arcade game since that I've found.
Dogfights were hilarious because each player would risk stalling so they'd have more momentum to maneuver an attack.
Did you play that old game?