You need to be able to walk before you can run.

Newbies are usually most worried about crashing the plane and use that as a criteria for selection.

Unfortunately that is not the way to select a first plane.

You stop crashing planes once you learn to fly well... so you need to learn first. That should be your biggest concern.

Once you do learn how to fly the planes, you can progress onto the foamies, etc.

What you want is an EASY to fly, easy to train on, plane that is fully equipped ( e.g. forget about 3 channel planes ) with all of the controls.

Trainers are specifically built with the neophyte in mind.

Newbies hate how they look unfortunately, because compromises have been made to make them fly well.

But newbies are best advised to overlook trying to obtain a Warbird, or anything that looks like a "real" plane, and stick with the trainers.

There is a great thread which RCKen put up about first plane choices.

Have a look at it.