Hiya!
I thnk the problem is that you are exclusively looking at cramped 10x10 ft dungeon room encounters where they have not much space to fly at all, especially upward.
If that is the only type of areas your PCs will adventure in, flying is no problem. But as soon as the encounter happens outside there is enough room for the flying pc to circle (flying back and forth), making the lack of hover ability a non-issue.
And what you call bauty I call failure, but that is another discussion.
No, I'm not looking at just dungeon/indoor stuff. Outdoor stuff is where an Aaracokra would shine. I guess it's kind of like a Dwarf being underground. Or a Wood Elf in the woods. Or a Human in a city. Or...or...or... you get the point. Aaracokra rock when they have the opportunity to do so... which basically means being outside with ample area to fly. Over the course of an actual game session, being outside, in a situation where flying would be a really nice thing, yeah, they will have an edge. This is
not a bad thing.
Why is it that so many players (and DM's) nowadays think that if one class/race/whatever is "overpowered" if it is placed in a situation where all/most of it's benefits come to bare? If something is weak in situations 1 through 5, average in 6 through 17, and powerful in 18 to 20... when it is in situation 18 - 20 it
should kick ass, right? In our case, in EVERY situation where an aaracokra can't fly freely, being able to fly is *totally useless*, and everyone's cool with that. But put it in a situation where it can fly freely and everyone suddenly looses their brown stuff.
I mean, what if Aaracokra was a playable race from the Starter Set. In the whole Phandelver adventure, I can think of only a handful of times where being able to fly would have even *remotely* been useful. The detriments to a lone PC flying around in the wilderness would pretty much limit the character to walking with everyone else, perhaps just taking flight every now and then to get a quick look up ahead one or two thousand feet. A scouting thief, wood elf, ranger, etc is nice...and everyone knows, dangerous as hell. Especially for low level characters.
It's been my experience that a flying PC is a nice bonus when the situation allows it to be used effectively. It has also been my experience that the vast majority of play-time isn't spent in such situations. Just like a dwarf underground, it's all circumstancial. Campaign play frequently has the DM saying stuff like "Your party travels along the Old-Iron Road for 3 days, passing by the odd farmhouse, but otherwise not encountering anything dangerous. You arrive in the town of Alderbridge at mid-morning. [Everyone mark off 3 days of food]. The guardsmen barely pay attention to you as you enter the town proper". Now, a campaign that is played with a time scale of hour-to-hour or even day-to-day (such as me, generally) may present more opportunity for a flying PC to "show his stuff". But that also means more potential for direct danger...usually based on player curiosity ("Hey, there's another farmhouse with overgrown fields. Lets go check it out!...").
Sorry guys, I'm still not seeing "flying aaracokra = broken" for any form of campaign play that I've ever been in, and that includes 3.x and PF.
^_^
Paul L. Ming