"C J Campbell" writes:

I can't remember where I read it, but I seem to recall that in the majority
of fatal accidents the pilot knew something was wrong with the airplane
before he even took off. It does seem like a popular trend reading through
the accident databases.

(Well, we all know pilots like to be trendy and popular.)

It's also common that pilots checked the fuel levels before departing
on flights that resulted in fatal accidents. Are you going to try to
infer something from that too?

I'm willing to bet that it's about as "popular a trend" that planes that
are involved with safe landings have problems known to the pilot. What
does that mean?

Planes are commonly flown with *some* problem. If I never flew a plane
with any problems I would have never made it through flight training.
(Heck, I went through four planes just to finish my initial checkride
and I still didn't get fully-functional instrumentation.)

Whether or not the problem has something to do with the accident would
be more interesting.

--kyler