Pay to win does not mean “paying for guaranteed victory.”
It means that through paying money, you acquire an objective mechanical advantage over your peers performing the same actions within reasonable deviation so that when 2 players of equal skill compete, it’s slanted in favour of the individual who paid money in a significant portion of cases.
Example:
Player without expert vs player with expert vs player with aced crew.
Due to max sustained Gs, max excess Gs, in a 1 vs 1 duel the player with expert and especially the player with ace crews will be able to perform and sustain maneuvers in the exact same plane that the player with a less trained crew cannot match no matter what they do.
Rather notably, I found this issue to come up a lot when performing defensive flying (rolling/flat scissors at high speeds to force an overshoot) - in planes with expert crews I can do it at higher speeds which allows me to exploit better high speed maneuverability and control to get behind my enemy. Also notably, lacking the expert crew status your plane will stop mid-roll and start flying straight.
You don’t even need a lot of Gs for it to happen. If your scissors sits around 5.5/6.0 G or so, due to the duration of pulls and rapid rolls adding up the multiple maneuvers involved, it will kick in reliably. Why 5.5/6.0 G? That’s where expert and ace crews make the difference.
Can you still win without an expert crew? Sure.
But you’re winning despite passing out when you wouldn’t have and flew straight for an extended period of time while being shot at.
Winning in such conditions usually means your opponent was in an inferior plane or were less experienced as a player.
Another case I found it come up a lot is during the initial turn of a high-speed merge (you’re flying comparable altitude, you dive down from a distance to gain speed for faster instantenous turn and hard-pull onto your opponent’s six. Doable “easily” (enemy compliance notwithstanding) in an experted ki-100 with high level crews, you blackout in a non-expert low level ki-100. Given we sacrifice a lot of energy for the tiny edge of turning a tiny bit faster, passing out and flying straight rather than getting our snapshot or position is going to have consequences.
Can you still win? Sure.
Enemy has an inferior plane, made a mistake or are simply too inexperienced to punish your vulnerability.
Note the still wins never including “enemy of same skill in mirror/same plane.”