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Looking at the most recent NTSB General Aviation Accident Data (2005, http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/A_Stat.htm), one thing struck me - the vast majority of accidents occurred without a flight plan, even though the majority of accidents were on non-local flights. Correlating with FAA activity data (http://www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation_data_statistics/general_aviation/CY2005/) suggests that filing a flight plan is a very good thing. The FAA activity data includes air taxi, but even assuming all the air taxi hours were on a flight plan, the accident rate per hour for flights without a flight plan was nearly five times that for flights with a flight plan. Factoring out the (higher accident rate) amateur-built, rotorcraft, and glider accidents doesn't change this much. The data on local vs. point-to-point accidents ...