It's a legitimate distinction, "they were in control" and "they weren't in control". If the pilots are on a collision course with a mountain, but are happily sitting there thinking they're going the other way, there's nothing wrong with the plane, and the pilots are in control of the plane. In contrast to a horizontal stabilizer failure, where the pilots aren't in control, and instead say their goodbyes for the cockpit voice recording.

I think CFIT is appropriate. There’s loads of cases where pilots flew into a mountain due to lack of environmental awareness. Here’s a bizarre example: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/lost-and-confused-the-cr...

It’s a bit more nuanced than that. CFIT is intended to classify accidents where the aircraft itself was not causal. In any other case, it is assumed that there were mechanical or other aircraft-related factors that were contributory or causal.

It seems pretty clearly describing a state + an outcome.

"(pilot control state) flight into (outcome of flight)"

One of those pieces of jargon that feels silly until you go, "Oh, actually, this makes a lot of sense when you deconstruct it."

Both result in a crash – the first due to pilot error, the second due to mechanical failure.

CFIT is not necessarily pilot error. For example, if ATC vectored a plane without ground proximity warnings into the side of a mountain, that would also be CFIT.