aircraft simulation

Well, first of all, you will need some form of 6dof camera... and watch out for gimbal lock! Just use the search feature here to find many a thread about these.

Do some research and find out what it is that makes an aircraft keep it's momentum, how it turns, climbs, descends etc... You will actually see that the concepts are very simple especially compared to car physics. Once you understand how things fit together, implementing flight physics should be pretty straightforward.

This should get you started

I have the book Flights of Fantasy by Christopher Lampton which does a pretty good job of making a flight sim in 3D.

It's outdated but the techniques for the flight model still apply.