Flares

Effectively, flares make good pilots completely invulnerable to anything besides other planes or dedicated AA vehicles. I'm not saying that they should die every time a stinger locks on but as it is right now, there's really no point in even trying. Yes, the stinger fires faster than the flares recharge- but only by a few seconds. That means that if the pilot is moving away from you, travel time will dictate the flares are back up before the missile hits.

Why not make flares more of an 'Oh shit!' button that you can use once in a while and less of a nigh-complete immunity type thing. It would encourage better piloting (IE: knowing how to dodge missiles). This would also give a nice counter to pilots who camp the enemy's air spawn.

Thoughts? Am I just bad at stinger? It seems the only real purpose is scaring bad pilots with the lockon and making them dump their flares before you've even fired.