If you have a critical failure (such as losing a wing or major control surface), you may have more time starting from high altitude, but you're still probably doomed.

At least in this case your trajectory is already about parallel to the surface. Unless you suddenly nose straight in, you have a decent chance of survival - especially if you can glide it in like some of the successful emergency water landings of traditional planes.

Losing a wing is disastrous regardless of altitude, there is no gliding with just one wing. Even at a few feet losing a wing would roll the plane instantly and you'd crash in the water inverted at 180mph.

Well let's put it this way - if you lose a wing at any altitude, you are screwed. But if you "only" have forward velocity as a problem, then you might just get lucky based on orientation or some other thing which absorbs some energy. If you're high altitude and lose that wing, there are probably fewer freak lucky things which can prevent you from pancaking into the earth.

One example of the latter is the many crashes of speedboats. They certainly can be fatal crashes, but sometimes things go unexpectedly well for the driver.

On the other hand, if it's foggy and there's a ship in your path with a broken beacon then being parallel to the sea surface would not matter much.

You're still worse off as an airplane at an airport. Runway incursions are a big problem. One of the worst air disasters ever was when two large passenger jets collided on a runway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster