Well the good news for fans is that it's all made up bullshit. Who's to say that the shield generators can't create a field that's a constantly morphing lifting body?

All of the “rules” cited here are from the EU books, which in large part were derived from the 1980s West End RPG. It’s unlikely that Lucas ever spent any time trying to figure out what a TIE fighter could or couldn’t do in an atmosphere, beyond what the effects budget at the time could accomplish. It’s incredibly…

YES! all these starships operating in atmosphere has been making me crazy! So glad I’m not the only one. This is how I have come to understand the fictional STAR WARS technology: