*sigh*
At the end of the day it's all down to personal preference as to whether you think it's important or not. Some do, some do not. Personally I don't give a crap whether the airliner I get on has force-feedback or not, nor - would it appear - do a significant number of pilots. All I care about is that the aircraft has been properly maintained and the pilots know what they're doing. A decent movie on the IFE is a nice bonus.
So please stop attacking the messenger here. For every pilot on here that is pro-feedback, there's another one that doesn't miss it. All I'm saying is that as long as there's no empirical evidence, only what individual pilots prefer, then there won't be a case for a design change. Flying a Pitts and an F4 are a world apart from airliner ops, as you well know, and if the worst that happened was a few extra tons of fuel burnt, then that's the airline's problem. How much more do you think would be burned cumulatively by filling the sidestick mounting areas with motors?
And Franzl - I *do* know what you're on about, I may have only flown twenty hours or so in a Chipmunk with an instructor present but I do understand the basics. And for what it's worth, I've had a fair bit of positive feedback from pilots via the PM channel too (I hope they don't mind me alluding to this), so while you're very much entitled to your opinion as to what I should and should not be talking about, please don't take it as a personal insult if I do not stick to my "sandbox".