Sam, do you get the Discovery series "Mayday"? The Gimli Glider, the Hudson River landing (another beauty) and many other episodes tell it like you said, several small issues make a large issue, many end at the scene of the coroner's investigation.
Doc, I'll have to see if I can find those shows. I used to watch one (on Discovery, I think) called 'Seconds from Disaster' that would step through what errors led up to a disaster. Several of them were airplane crashes. Same kinda show it sounds like.
I saw a guy trying to load 12 foot pieces of 1X12 into his Ford LTD at lowes once...Obviously they wouldn't fit into the trunk, so he rolled down the rear windows and loaded them so they looked like airplane wings and off he went!