so i was trying to look up technology companies on the web, to help me with the last few answers in this maddening quiz (i still need B, D, L, N, T, U, and W. D, L, N, and W are particularly maddening because i know i've seen those logos 1000 times) when i came across the crash database.

the moral of what i learned on the crash database is: don't fly aeroflot. now, i've been told not to fly aeroflot before, by several people including my dad the airline pilot, around the occasion of my going to russia. while actually in russia i heard personal accounts of some passengers' questionable experiences, like seeing people bring their own deck chairs on board as seats. and duct tape around the windows.

but i digress. while clicking around the crash database (by airline), i noticed that all the airlines i was clicking on had between 0 (GO aer lingus! GO sabena!) and 12 (e.g. united, two of which were of course on 11 september 2001) crashes.

aeroflot has 122.

122! aeroflot's record is so bad that it's an order of magnitude worse than even china airlines, whose parent administration's initials, CAAC (civil aviation administration of china) were jokingly said to stand for china airlines always crashes. fer cryin' out loud.

take special note of the last one, where the cause of the crash was the pilot having let his 11- and 16-year-old children take turns flying the plane! so, don't fly aeroflot. got it? good.

other interesting crashes:

the 1977 pan am/KLM crash in tenerife, canary islands. the pan am plane was on the runway, taxi-ing. it missed it's exit off the runway. the KLM flight was taking off (before receiving permission) and reached its take-off point before the pan am flight was off the runway. it hit the top of the pan am plane, and both planes burst into flames, killing 584 of the 644 people on the two planes combined. stands as the worst death toll in aviation history (of people actually on planes. of course the 9/11 crashes killed more people on the ground.)

the 2002 bashkirian/DHL midair crash over germany. after receiving contradictory instructions from his onboard systems and the swiss air traffic controller, the passenger jet (carrying 52 kids on a beach vacation) crashed into the cargo jet at 35,000 feet. oy.

the 1990 british airways non-crash in england. at altitude, part of the windshield in the cockpit came loose. the captain was sucked out of his seatbelt and out the window. he tried holding on to the yoke (steering column). luckily, a steward in the cockpit grabbed his legs and held on. another steward strapped himself in and helped hold on to the captain. the co-pilot made an emergency landing. no one was killed (!) and the only injuries were to the captain, who had frostbite and some fractures after 15 minutes halfway outside the plane. the cause? improper bolts used to replace the windshield 2 days earlier.