I've actually been studying aerial photos and I want to eventually try my hand at an interception animation. The main problem is I don't quite have the time (I still have to finish the texture on that wormhole generator - and it's been how long?) But I'll try to give some hints to help things out.
Afterburner flames:
I gave a couple hints for engine textures a while ago:
http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=2628.msg16664#msg16664Aircraft do not run on afterburner all the time. It's a huge waste of fuel, of course. If you looked into the nozzle of a non-afterburning engine, it'd look dark because the combustion happens in front of the turbine blades. This means you don't have to create any afterburner flames most of the time.
When a jet engine is in afterburner, what you see depends on the lighting. For some afterburners and bright lighting (daytime), all you'd see is a glow inside the engine.
http://www.pw.utc.com/StaticFiles/Pratt%20&%20Whitney/News/Press%20Releases/Assets/Images/F35_afterburner.jpg For others (such as in dusk/night) you'd see a nice long, flamey tail.
http://www.cloud9photography.us/ab/AB06_F-14NIGHT_PETERMANCUS.jpg A lot of the time, all you actually see are the shock diamonds -
http://www.geocities.com/jiyangc/f22afterburner2.jpg http://farm1.static.flickr.com/217/487578907_da7944a9e4.jpg/f22afterburner2.jpg,
Not only that, but the Saracen has vanes covering its engine to vector thrust for STOL. I don't think its afterburner would even create nice, long flames or shock diamonds. Instead, when I made my renders, I used just engine glow and heat distortion.
http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=1675.msg9935#msg9935To make the engine glow, I put several semitransparent orange planes inside the engine. To make the heat distortion, I spilled out really ugly cloud textures with 'color' enabled - it looks like
Super Magical Rainbow Plane! 
But I fed this layer of particles into the compositor to drive a displacement node, which simulates the distortion you get with strong temperature gradients in air.
Atmosphere/Clouds:
One thing that will
really help the sky is to use the new atmospheric shader in the latest blender.
http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-248/sun-sky-and-atmosphere/ I think adding those effects will increase the quality by an order of magnutude.
On the subject of clouds - those are tough to do convincingly in blender. In all my renders I simply used background plates. With the atmosphere shader outlined above, it may be better to not have
any clouds at all until blender gets a proper volumetric shader.
The current clouds you have in the last animation look like they are at a very high altitude, so they should be wispy ice clouds, but they have the shape and texture of mid-level altocululus clouds. Unfortunately, I don't know how to make nice wispy cirrus clouds procedurally in blender, so you might want to just paint or download some textures, then use those instead.
The 3D clouds generated by that automatic generator added a
lot by their very nature of being 3D. The problem is the way the generator seems to work: it fills in a cube with a procedural cloud. If you have an infinite grid of equally sized cubes as your layer of clouds, you get an infinite grid of equally sized cube-like clouds which, of course, looks very unnatural. Maybe the best way to fix that is to base the cloud layer off of randomly placed pyramids - the pyramids should be all sizes and shapes, and pseudorandomly placed to encourage overlapping and large gaps.
Something I want to try (again when I have the time) is to make a
mesh representing the top surface of a cumulus cloud formation and use SSS approximation, and maybe a few sprays of particles and compositor post-processing for the fuzziness.
If you are going to use textured planes as clouds, also keep in mind the curvature of the earth. Although the landscape will have no visible curvature except at extremely high altitudes, a 'solid layer' of cirrus clouds
will eventually touch the horizon - the two exceptions are if the cloud formation does not extend that far, or atmospheric haze obscures the distant clouds.
The landscape in the latest image looks good, but a little 'video-gamey.' Fixing light and shadows should help with that a lot. My ultimate goal is to be able to create procedurally-produced landscapes on moving planes (such that the landscape is
always underneath the action, regardless of how far the planes fly), but creating convincing terrain features and colours is something that still eludes me.
I
really want to know how the guys that make
Dogfights! make their landscapes.
Camera movement/Animation:
Winter's already said that he likes shakey-cam, and I also love the effect when it's done properly. Effective animation and realistic camera movement can lend a lot of realistic weight to an otherwise cartoony scene.
Camera rigs:
Instead of just a camera floating through air, it can become somewhat complicated. The simplest camera rig has a free-floating camera with a track-to constraint set on an empty.
One of the better camera rigs would probably be something like this: There is a curve (bezier, nurbs, or path) for the generic movement of the camera. Set to follow this curve is an empty, EmptyCCurve. (Or whatever you want to name it). Another empty, EmptyCAim, is set to
copy location on EmptyCCuve, and EmptyCAim is also set to
track to EmptyCTarget. Empty CTarget is placed wherever you want to aim your camera, generally - it can be freefloating, parented, or set to follow a curve. Finally, your Camera is
parented to EmptyCAim.
What's the point of all the complication? It gives us lots of options. If you're simulating shakey-cam, I'd suggest leaving EmptyCTarget free or parented to your ship. If it's free, only put IPO location keys approximately 1-4 seconds apart, and move EmptyCTarget around your subject.
Either method you use, you can then add camera shake in the IPO editor. Select your camera, and add a new pane (or change a pane) to the IPO editor. On the right, you should see some options dLocX, dLocY, dLocZ, and dRotX, dRotY, dRotZ. Select one of these, and you can use CTRL-LMB (CTRL-RMB if you changed it so LMB selects instead of RMB) to draw IPO curves directly. For camera shake especially, you can record mouse movements directly: select two channels (Such as dRotX and dRotY), press CTRL-R, and select an option. In this mode, if you hold down the CTRL button it will record your mouse movements directly. So hold down CTRL and shake your mouse about and you'll get a nice camera shake effect.
Remember to use camera shake
sparingly! Only using it when an actual cameraman would have trouble keeping the object in frame - such as if the shockwave from a passing jet passes over him, or the action is so fast he has a hard time moving his camera about.
Attaching your jet to a curve will make animation nice and smooth, as well. Just watch out if your curve goes past vertical - blender doesn't know which way is 'up', and if your plane tries to make a loop it will make some
very odd spins when it is heading straight up or straight down. Aside from that little kink (which can be compensated for by using more advanced rigs) you'll have a much more believable animation because your camera has to react to the movement of the plane.
