And jets are flying 10 kph. I'm gonna take a wild guess and say it was never meant to be realistic.
That's exactly what I hated about all BF games until BC2. The jets are totally pointless. It doesn't even feel like you're flying a jet, it feels beyond arcadey -- generally I just don't like games that try to do a whole bunch of things at once and don't do any of them 100%. Like for example I didn't like BF2 because it was neither a great FPS (blocky, no-detail environments) or a great combat flight game (you fly a jet around a 1-square-kilometer battlefield at 30 km/h). BC2 was great for me because it WAS a great FPS, it was just a great FPS with some really cool vehicle elements thrown in that worked well.
From day one I've had the concern that BF3 would return to being neither here nor there, but it looks like the FPS element is actually pretty solid so far. Still, the jets and everything might turn out pretty dull again.
After playing flight sims for so long I just can't stand the aircraft in Battlefield-type games.