Plane went down, probably from an EMP.
Nope, EMP has no effect on vacuum tube based electronics. If you recall, the Fallout universe never made the discovery of microchips, thus most electronics in Fallout still use vacuum tubes (see the teaser trailer with the radio. The light bulb things are the vacuum tubes).
Quoting from the almighty wiki:
Older, vacuum tube (valve) based equipment is much less vulnerable to EMP than newer solid state equipment; Soviet Cold War?era military aircraft often had avionics based on vacuum tubes due both to limitations in Soviet solid-state capabilities and a belief that the vacuum gear would survive better.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse
So, EMP has no effect on the electronics of the Fallout universe. That's why radios and terminals still work.
Further, EMP's actual effects weren't really realised until the 1960s. Since the "Science!" of the Fallout universe is based on 1950 era assumptions (radiation creating mutants, no nuclear winter, etc.), EMP would have been irrelevant.