What control scheme do ESCs for RC planes use?
I was expecting some kind of closed loop control of the stator field with respect to the rotor field  


Indeed, there is. The ESC senses the back-electromotive force (back-EMF) produced by the motor, and keeps track of the rotor position using that information.  

The back-EMF is a term for the voltage induced into the stator windings due to them being exposed to a time-varying magnetic field, in turn created by the spinning permanent magnet rotor. In essence, the back-EMF is the voltage that would be present at the terminals of an extenally spun motor without anything being connected to it. 

If the motor is at rest, the rotor isn't spinning, so there is no back-EMF to sense. The only thing that the ESC can do is to blindly spin the rotor by driving the motor phases open loop, until back-EMF builds up enough for the ESC to figure out the true position of the rotor. This works acceptably with just a propeller or the inertia of a lightweight transmission and chassis of a RC car as a load, not so much with a high geared motor driving a human.