SA 17yr old student crash

[rnzoli]

Originally Posted by white light

After reading through this thread, my initial thoughts are to give up flying. As a future hirer, it seems from some of the thread answers, that any aircraft can have an incident which then impacts the standard stall recovery.
Thing is, we may never be imparted with the information as to which aircraft are affected.

The level of professionalism of current maintenance is the most important factor. You can have 10-15 year old training aircraft beaten to death already, or 40-60 year old, very neatly maintained.
Having a co-located maintenance organization with the rental fleet is a huge plus, because you can go to the mechanic and have a useful discussion on what you see on the aircraft, any suspicious things etc.
Edit: and the last line of defence is your walk-around, of course....don't take it lightly.