I am really surprised this didn't kick up

retroron said

I must have missed the part about wings breaking off. Aircraft are inspected for cyclic fatigue so as to preclude material failure. Airplanes normally crash because of terrain interference with the flight path or operator error, hardly ever for material failure.

Click to expand...

Simplest answer as why planes crash... Gravity!

Yes, error is a larger factor in plane crashes.

The other engineering deal with early cars was the huge dive the front end would make when braking to give passengers the sensation of stopping quickly, when they really weren't!