Arthur:
1 Aircrew ARE children. Groundcrew, in my experience, have always referred to the aircrew crewroom as the 'playpen'. Quoth the sign-in desk Sergeant, "What have the children done NOW?".
2 Since the use of physics in this case is to explain, then pontificating about total reaction is worse than useless if it doesn't lead to understanding.
3 Most reference data is provided as separate lift and drag data, so reassembling it into total reaction is inefficient.
4 Acting all superior about it ("lies") does nothing for the reputation of physicists as people worth listening to.