I remember a conversation at a little dive hostel in Durban, where the table was recounting their Bad Flight stories, one upping each other as one does at dive hostels around the world. After a particularly grim story about The Gambia, this heretofore quiet older guy mumbles "yeah, I'm never going to fly Air Ethiopia again."
Conversation proceeded, but after a few more stories, I asked the guy why, exactly he wasn't planning to fly that airline again.
Turned out he'd personally been on not one but two Air Ethiopia plane crashes. Crashed two thirds of their fleet single handedly evidently.
The second time, they'd landed in the jungle in the Congo, were detained by a local warlord, attempted escape, and were gunned down by the local militia. Back in government hands, the survivors were put on a plane, which sat on the runway for an hour surrounded by jeeps and shouting men before they were unloaded and marched off to a shed, expecting to be killed. Several tense hours later, the "general" came back and said they could go now, and apologized for the delay, as they needed the plane "to bomb the rebels."
Then he showed us the bullet wound in his back.
Since then, I tend to temper my speech when discussing how authentic my personal travel experiences are in relation to others.
But I did steal his story.