I find that my nice new shiny planes last about 5 flights max before I do some sort of damage. After I have repaired them once then I lose interest. It is these ones that look like hell that I don't care about that last for years and years.

Seriously though, your first plane will get abused. The advent of buddy boxes have made this far less painful. You will then probably go through a period of minor mishaps which will vary in severeness from scraping a wingtip to destroying the airframe. These types of incident allow most of the major components to be re-used.

After a while you will notice that you are crashing less and less. It is at this point that your models last longer and you start getting a few incidents caused by component failure.

Half the fun is not crashing. The feeling of drving home with your model in one piece is great. Crashing is just an excuse to build another new shiny plane!