That's one sad thing about aircraft. It's very complex. Thousands of screws and if one goes missing the aircraft could fall apart at critical moment. I know someone who works as aircraft technician and he describes his job extremely challenging. For example, a pilot said he believed the airplane was hit by lightning but the engineers couldn't locate any lightning mark. Could they risk the chance? Spent an extra 15 minutes and they still couldn't find any. Till this day neither the pilot nor any engineer could confirm that a lightning hit the aircraft that day.

Every time I go on an airplane I would pray to get back on the ground safely. Everyone feels the fear when the airplane starts shaking or descending rapidly. Despite all the safety and escape plans, if an aircraft is doomed to crash/break apart/blow up, the chance of staying alive is so slim. And people on the airplane know they are about to die and that fear could last from a few seconds to a whole minute. That's a horrible way to die! I mean if you were on a bus and crashed on the high way, that's probably a few seconds. If you are lucky you could jump off the bus before the impact.

This might be off topic, but this is also the exact reason why terrorists like to hijack airplane (I don't want to raise a holy war on airport security here, just let me finish my thoughts here, please!). And you are right, we have to learn through accidents and that's unfortunate. We do that all the time. I count myself a lucky one because I am still alive. I hope I don't become the next victim. I hope this will not happen again.