The E: You're quite right. He's under no obligation whatsoever to listen to me. If he prefers his interceptor that way, then he certainly shouldn't change it for my sake.
However, he asked for feedback, and I gave mine. I was not under the impression that only positive feedback was allowed. I don't think I was rude or mean (if I was, it wasn't my intention).
Lowering detail is not something that's all that difficult to do (the most time consuming part is reworking the UV map). In fact, a high-poly model is immensely useful for generating normal maps for a lower-poly one. And I think pecenipicek already plans on doing that, since there's little reason to model the panel lines otherwise. Using an existing model might save him some time.