Can you imagine an airline that killed one passenger in every 385 that it carried?

That was the shocking record of an airline that once flew between Britain and South America. A British airline, a forerunner of British Airways, called British South American Airways.

BSAA was run by Don Bennett, the leader of the wartime Pathfinder Force, which led bomber raids during the Second World War. Bennett tried to reassure civil aviation bosses that BSAA had a far better safety record than his Pathfinders – as if losing fewer passengers than bomber crews was a suitable benchmark for an airline.   

I’ve just read Jay Rayner’s fascinating book, Star Dust Falling, about the airline and its most famous crash, that of the Lancastrian airliner Star Dust in the Andes in 1947. The wreckage was finally discovered over 50 years later. Rayner tells the moving story of the passengers who lost their lives when the aircraft hit a mountain side. Amazingly, it took further tragedy before Bennett was fired.