Personally I think that it is a mistake as I doubt that the Ace team was not showing a profit. I also suspect that they are just using the whole recession to ‘cut some fat’.

Some articles actually claim that Microsoft is only restructuring and that they have no real plans to drop Flight Simulator

On my side this is not really going to slow me down as I enjoy what I do. In fact I am planning on adding support for older versions of Fligth simulator.
I might even add support for x-plane as I have no doubt that if Flight simulator does not make a comeback x-plane will be the next favorite amongst enthusiasts, (plus I think it would be nice to support more than one simulator).