I'm not saying the flight plan had any real affect on the accident.

My father was a pilot (small aircraft), and he said that from the pilots he knew and flew with and around, those who didn't file flight plans were usually pretty sloppy with both their other pre-flight and in-flight procedures.

I read that something like 90% of aircraft crashes are pilot error. And those errors usually don't just appear out of the blue, the people involved have just lucked out in other cases, and their luck finally ran out.

Sue