The old "Familiarity Breeds Contempt" syndrome applies to other than people. You break that with EDC discipline. My helmet bag always goes flying with me, water, tools, signaling equipment, et al. On a VFR flight such as Fossett was on I'd have more gear, not less; there was no reason for Fossett to have left gear behind. There's no such thing as a "routine flight".
Every time you take-off you have to assume that today the plane or the weather or a flock of birds will try to kill you. An experienced aviator knows that stuff can go wrong on any flight so you always take core gear and supplement as conditions dictate. Sure the plane may have survival/emergency gear/supplies and if I owned that plane it would be well equipped for me. But Fossett was borrowing the plane and as we learn more each day, apparently it wasn't as well supplied as the owners may have thought it was.
Something went wrong with either Fossett or the plane and the rest is becoming history.
_________________________
Better is the Enemy of Good Enough.
Okay, what’s your point??