I'm a mechanical engineer by degree, aerospace by career. I slacked in college, got ok grades at my state's school and nabbed an aerospace job in the worst job market in recent history (had to be willing to work for very little). Now I make nearly five times what I did when I started (jumping companies of course),…

I'd say let's wait for the NTSB report, 98% of the time the cause starts with "Pilot's failure to...." so you're probably right. I would be curious to see the incident report for the mice though.

Unless he's certified there isn't a whole lot of maintenance he can do on his own. If the plane is a rental it has to have had an inspection every 100 hours, if you own the plane it only has to have an annual inspection by a certified mechanic.

It's easy to criticize, especially when you don't know anything about the incident. Should something like that be caught during pre-flight? Possibly. But I know I can't see all the way to the manifold when I check the intake so it's conceivable he checked and didn't see anything. But this is par for the course with…

Man, I grew up in Vancouver, WA and have never heard of these.

It's crazy stupid how many people in the Seattle area have unsecured wireless networks. When I worked as a Comcrack installer and needed wifi for my laptop (no phone tether at the time) I'd drive maybe 3 or 4 blocks until I found a unsecured network to connect to (for browsing, no online baking). It worked every time…