Thanks for offering your thoughts, Piltdown Man. I did have the Aloha incident in mind, though the fact that it was able to land strikes me as a bit of a fluke. China Airlines Flight 611 also came to mind, which as you know did not have such a fortunate outcome.
Still, the key point in your post is the unlikelihood of something actually breaking on one specific flight, out of the the tens thousands in the life of any given aircraft. Yes, it is always extremely unlikely, but nevertheless the mere suggestion of anything out of the ordinary is quite worrisome.
ONB: Your decision to utilize unfounded personal attacks in our discussion makes continuing the debate rather undesirable. However, I will simply point out that my observation was not a "statistical fallacy." If a person is shooting free throws on a basketball court and makes 10 for 10 it is an impressive feat, but I'd put my money any day on the guy who has made 999 out 1,000.
Last edited by scroggins; 1st Jul 2012 at 08:20.