I like the art style, but I feel like it worked against the game. It made it really hard to tell when I was looking at the horizon, and without a level indicator on the dash, figuring out what way your facing is nearly impossible. The idea of having to consult the manual while in the middle of a crash is fascinating, but it falls down for me in practice. Since the manual never changes, it just meant that I had to read it in 5-10 second chunks with a "crash" in between each. Maybe making the core information (like how a plane works) available on the main menu and randomly-generated information (like control layout on the dash) in the in-game manual.
Also, is it just me, or does the plane feel... wrong. I'm not a pilot, but I do somewhat understand aerodynamics. It seems kind of like the plane constantly has air brakes on. Maybe it's that the throttle seems to do very little or that the plain starts out with too little speed and elevation to comfortably recover. I'm not sure, but it does feel odd to me.