As his chair catapulted cleanly out of the flaming cockpit, Jim suddenly regretted scowling at the safety inspector who'd delayed him ten minutes. (Source)

Pretty much every single plane crash is covered by the news, and we estimate there's somewhere between a 100% and 110% percent chance that each of those planes was checked by an aviation safety inspector at some point before takeoff—and inspected again at some point after falling back to Earth.

But despite this incredible interest we all seem to have in aviation safety (deeply rooted fear of flying, anyone?), nobody's paying attention to the dude with the clipboard. Sorry, all of you would-be checklist wizards, but if you're doing your job right, nobody but the FAA is ever going to know you're there.

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