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Further to the '85 crash where they tried to land only on engine power, there was a story a few months ago that NASA has embarked on a program to be able to control an aircraft solely by engine power and also another program to make a self-programmable FCS, as in it would be able to recognized that damage/something missing had occured and automatically compensate.

From what I remember about Japanese requirements, they use a 'high density' layout, simply because they are smaller than on average than 'Westerners' on account (apparently) of their different diet. There was also a linked story that Japanese airline are having to increase the leg space between seats as Japanese are getting taller exactly because they are eating more fatty foods!

I'm always amazed about why aircraft 'fall out of the sky', especially the cases due to bad maintenance or just bad workers. In Chuck Yeager's autobiography, he recounts a tail of F-86s suddenly starting to crash in to the ground for no apparent reason. He himself goes to check it out. The test flight was uneventful and at the end of it he went to buzz some friend by a lake. He rolled his F-86 inverted over the lake, but then for some reason he could not reverse the roll. The ailerons locked. He, of course, managed to roll out of it.

Back at Muroc, they took the wings apart and found that the bolts holding the ailerons had been put in upsidedown. The 'error' was traced to a single worker on an F-86 production line. When he was questioned about this malpractice, he replied 'what does it matter which way the bolts go in?'.

VRN