As far as I understood what Colin said, it's not the animation that causes the difficulties. The input for the BR (left-right-left, or vice-versa) is frame based, so when a frame is skipped due to a drop in framerate because so much is going on (enemy ships, weapons fire, etc.) the input itself gets messed up. What I think would be a good way around this problem would be to change the input to this:

First, while in the air, you have to release off the gas (you don't lose speed in the air anyway afaik), then you do the left-right-left (not frame based, so you can do it really slow, too, if you have the airtime), and then you have to step on the gas again to confirm it. I think that would solve the frame issue, and would also make the BR a little more difficult to use on smaller jumps.

Does that sound reasonable to you, Colin?