That makes sense except for the despawning part. For instance all our AI flights despawn on the ground - if they actually make it home. I think the problem lies in how they are spawned tbh. I tried script spawning, sub mission spawning, and delayed spawning through another submission and the problem has always remained. I think some dots are actually left over pieces of planes floating in the air. The dot, at distance, is the same size regardless if it's an entire plane or an elevator of a particular plane just floating in the air.
There's definitely some major problems regardless. We have AI ships that fly and static ships that float upside down or on their side. Would be nice if the MP world had any sort of tutorial or some sort of real dedicated server instead of the steam client crap we deal with now. Maybe one day
