What if your outta gas?
What if your engine is shot out and you barley make it back to the base?
What if ya bellyland and slide off the runway?
Either way I landed safely at my own base, while trying to dodge buildings and gun enplacements, enemy vulchers etc.
There are quite a few different reasons that you sometimes can,t land on a paved runway.
What about GVS?
Thats a whole other can of worms, with the same problem.
I do not see a can of worms, and I definitely do not see any problem there.
The challenge is to make it back to runway. If you fail, you just fail, whether it's because the enemy tried to prevent it (damage, crash while dodging vulchers) or you simply messed up (out of gas). It's up to you to overcome the obstacles.
And as it already was pointed out in this thread, once you get "landed" anywhere on field the next requests to extend that limit again will come "seroiusly, why should it be a ditch when I'm just 3 feet away from the field, which's boundaries can not be seen anyway? "