Romaniacs top ten were on air forks because the riders were on KTM or Husky and they had the choice of AER 48 or Xplor. Thats all those brands have. Faced with the choice of the crappy XPLOR fork I would have chosen AER as well. The fact is we went down the air road in the ‘70’s, went down it again recently over the last five plus years, and now all the bike manufacturers are going back
to springs again. When the manufacturers went air again, I thought “oh no, they didn’t learn their lesson the first time”. Or, some ****ing marketing genius is at it again. I race on a KYB PSF2 air fork, and I can tell you it sucks ass. One spring conversion and $1100 later it works well. Don’t get me started on this air thing. It has it advantages of course, but they don’t outweigh the spring option.
You forgot about that thing called the Cone Valve they have the option to use The AER 48 gets pretty decent reviews by the bike mags compared to other forks regardless of being air or spring. I like mine better than a few other forks I've ridden, which is not a great amount I will admit. It's no secret KYB and Showa were not as successful at getting air to work well.