Late 1990s, a handful of training command butter bar types (not all of them current flight students at the time of the story; this detail is relevant) rent a pair of small airplanes in Pensacola for a "hundred dollar hamburger" on a Saturday night. So far, so good, and a pretty neat way to spend part of your weekend.
Well, the return trip ended quite spectacularly, with one of the airplanes crashing on the roof of the mall next to the airport. Local media reports remarked about what great luck that there were not only no major injuries but neither was there any post-crash fire. Now, aviation-savvy readers will tend to consider that last detail as having very little to do with "luck." The NTSB accident investigation shed much light on the mishap, but without completely giving away the conclusion, perhaps it is relevant to mention that the ill-fated pilot was an API attrite--going from memory although I'm pretty confident in the details--for some academic performance issues on the navigation exam(s).