Experienced players know instantly when their plane is done for. A quick look at the damage indicator and a move of the stick is enough to tell.
Flying a dead stick like that drives me nuts. The plane won't do what I want to do so why waste precious flight time struggling with a doomed aircraft. It's only a matter of time before you stall or are picked off by someone else so may as well let the guy who killed your plane get the credit.
I bail out and get back in the fight with a fresh plane. In CTA or strike some advanced play is to criple a player rather than kill him. That gains time for landing or bombing if that guy doesn't realise and tries to fly a dead aircraft.
I will say if a player deliberately won't bail (and regular players can spot these a mile away) I won't bail for them

ive been shot so many times,so im good at bailing,its a must to make the game enjoyable for everyone,9 out of 10 times i will hit that button before i crash,or like dk said two black wings or no engine im flipping the plane over and im out,putting a bit of silk in the sky.sim mode is the worst for crashy crash games and smoking bombers crashing into targets,

Granted, the gentlemen approach is to bail out. However, as someone noted in another post, a good percentage of the time in Sim. the battles are on the deck which gives you little time to execute the bailout procedure. As OLife pointed out, this game has its quirks and ongoing issues, but enjoyable nonetheless.......

That would be a good idea for the inevitable sequel, you only get one life and a limited number of planes. If you're killed or you crash, then you're done. But if you bail at the right moment then you restart at the nearest airfield.

Of course we'll have re-arm airfields and German cockpits and dedicated servers as well.

for my opinion on bailing and non bailing read Dkwookies post again.
And in all honesty bailing only really works well in certain modes where the player aircraft aren't constantly scrabbling around the deck: in those modes you have little choice but crashing, purposefully or not.