Were you interested in After Burner Climax but never quite got around to buying it?  Now would seem to be the time to correct that, according to a post from XBLA-watching Twitter feed lifelower.  It seems After Burner Climax has a limited lifespan of availability, good until December 24 and then Santa yanks it away during his holiday rounds that night.  At the moment there's just the one tweet worth of confirmation on this information, so put it into the Rumor category of your brain, but it's not a particularly unbelievable one and the source is reliable.

After Burner Climax is currently available on both XBLA and SEN, and the most likely reason for its removal is licensing.  Sega licensed planes from real-world manufacturers for the 2006 arcade game, and those deals only last so long.  Like Capcom's Marvel licenses for their fighters, once the time is up you can either renegotiate or admit that the game has run its financial course.  At this point it doesn't seem likely that After Burner Climax is burning up the sales charts so it's time to let the contracts expire.  Those who own the game can retain access to it, of course, but if you don't?  Well, there was a 4.5 year window of access, so it's not like the opportunity wasn't there.

Goodbye, After Burner Climax.  It was great to have you around as long as possible.