Qantas and accidents (Was: More airline humor)

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 03/08/2003 4:27:02 PM Eastern Standard Time,
scorn at PACIFIC.NET.AU writes:

> ><snip> By the way, QANTAS is the only
>  >major airline that has never had an accident. <snip>
>
>  This claim gained some currency from the movie "Rainman", if I remember
>  rightly. Apologies if this is a little OT, but I think you may mean "never
>  had a FATAL accident".

Actually I didn't mean anything.  I work for the US Federal Aviation
Administration and I found this posted anonymously on a bulletin board.
(Lots of stuff gets posted anonymously on bulletin boards in our building but
rarely anything that would be amusing to linguists.)  The claim about Qantas
was made by the composer of the list, whoever s/he was.  The intention may
have been to show that despite having a sense of humor, Qantas mechanics were
reliable.

I work with air traffic control, not crash investigations, so I had no idea
what Qantas's safety record was or wasn't.

    - Jim Landau