I have been told by pilots on more than one occasion that

• Landing [in an aircraft] is a controlled crash
• Any landing you walk away from is a good one

So all landings are crashes, with varying levels of violence, and your distinction is arbitrary.

If you want to argue that this is not the idiom then I point out that you opened the debate with a demonstration that sometimes it is the idiom.

I have been told by pilots on more than one occasion that

• Landing [an aircraft] is a controlled crash
• Any landing you walk away from is a good one

So all landings are crashes, with varying levels of violence, and your distinction is arbitrary and in particular not shared by the people to whom it applies.

If you want to argue that this is not the idiom then I point out that you opened the debate with a demonstration that sometimes it is the idiom.

I have been told by pilots on more than one occasion that

• Landing [in an aircraft] is a controlled crash
• Any landing you walk away from is a good one

So all landings are crashes, with varying levels of violence, and your distinction is meaningless.

If you want to argue that this is not the idiom then I point out that you opened the debate with a demonstration that sometimes it is the idiom.

I have been told by pilots on more than one occasion that

• Landing [in an aircraft] is a controlled crash
• Any landing you walk away from is a good one

So all landings are crashes, with varying levels of violence, and your distinction is arbitrary.

If you want to argue that this is not the idiom then I point out that you opened the debate with a demonstration that sometimes it is the idiom.