In the Demo they are there, in the Beta they are not.Was this removed? I hope not, it was one of those texture improvements that I really liked (added some realism).If the Beta is newer than the Demo, I'm guessing this feature was removed....and if so, why?

They said originally the Beta was going to be based on code older then the Demo. But then with all the bug reports they started getting from the Demo they decided to update the code in the Beta. Maybe that particular feature didn't get added? Don't have the Beta myself so I can't check out anything in it."Let me help you out. You're cleared to taxi any way you can to any runway you see."

i find the reflections quite annoying... is there a way to turn them off for other aircraft?

The beta and demo may be from different "branches" of development - the demo branch may have received the reflections, while the beta branch may not have. Just as the beta branch may have received some other bugfixes that aren't in the demo. The true "closed" beta participants (not Fileplanet/Gamespy) would presumably get all the bugfixes in subsequent beta/RC builds. -Greg