Final answer:
The belief that a plane is 'due for a crash' because it has a good safety record is an example of the gambler's fallacy, which mistakenly assumes past events influence the probability of future independent events.
Step-by-step explanation:
The belief that you shouldn't fly on an airplane with a good safety record because it is 'due for a crash' is an example of the gambler's fallacy. This cognitive bias incorrectly assumes that if something happens less frequently in the recent past, it is more likely to occur in the near future. This is faulty reasoning because each flight, like each coin flip, is an independent event, and the odds do not increase simply because an accident hasn't happened recently.
The gambler's fallacy is a misunderstanding of how probability works. It's the mistaken belief that past events can affect the likelihood of something happening in the future when the events are independent of each other. For example, thinking a coin is 'due' to land on tails after a series of heads, despite each flip being independent and having a 50/50 chance.