You are not considering the difference between vehicles and planes: it takes you 5 minutes to fly back to base it takes me about an hour or more to drive back to base. It's moot anyway; someone mentioned in the main thread that Hitech already acknowledged it's a bug in the new patch.
However, I agree with you that if you fly your plane back to your field and skid off the runway undamaged into the dirt, you should still get a landing as the crew would just push or tow the plane to the field.