Unless an aircraft design is irredeemably bad, even the worst of them get corrected, and their fatal flaws become just a bad memory. Which is why the following selection of dangerous airplanes will inevitably prompt cries of "Nothing wrong with that bird once pilots learned how to operate 'er," or "Great machine, just took a little refining." Tell that to the pilots whose last earthly view was the ground approaching at 600 knots, or passengers who had only a moment of consciousness as a cabin shattered around them. There are no do-overs in flight, and we offer this selection of aviation's Achilles' heels as evidence that bad things happen even to aircraft that eventually gain good reputations.
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