Air Combat rules

I've reached the point in the book where I am trying to rework Richard's percentile Air Combat rules.

They give me a headache. 

Does anyone ever use them?  Do I need to expand on them so they make sense to a non-wargamer? Leave them alone because they are workable as is?

Or cut them out because HH is supposed to be systemless and most games have a mechanic for vehicle damage? 

Well I'm going to say "cut them out". Mainly because if I use system X, X will have rules to cover vehicle to vehicle combat.

The only thing I would add is that because of the MDDs, you can slow your aircraft to speeds where you can board another aircraft while flying. Even have sword fights, if you wish, on the wings! Air combat can be fast or as slow as you want.

When it comes to air/space combat, I have played Star Fleet Battles at one end of the spectrum and roll two dice and the higher number wins on the other end.  While I'm not familiar with the HH rules so much, I tend to favor things being on the less complex side. 

Perhaps unhelpfully, I never use vehicle design and combat rules. I'm not terribly interested in the things in the real world, let alone a fantasy. Characters are what it's all about, so I just need to know the basics such as whether something is particularly slow, or especially manoeuvrable, and how that affects the pilot.

If I was using Fate, the NPC sky pirates would be maneuvering to create the advantage of "Slow them down" thus letting another pirate plane to get into position and create the advantage "Boarding party". At that point it would be up to the players to deal with them and either prevent the pirates from creating those advantages or dealing with the boarding party afterwards.

Nothing in that requires any special rules, as it all plays into the world setting and inherent oddness of the HH.