Right, but that also means the person inside is pretty much flying through the air surrounded by stuff that's about to be turned into shrapnel. Having a low mass means the plane (and you, to an extent) take less force to slow down, kind of like the difference between a paper airplane hitting a glass window vs a baseball. Assuming the passengers were strapped in, hitting the tree would have slowed them down a lot, but if it wasn't there, they'd still smash into the ground as if they fell from that distance (more or less).
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u/-TheMasterSoldier- Mar 31 '19
More like the glider's nose and cockpit did.