Wired's list of the 10 worst aircraft

In a sure sign that the summer doldrums are upon us, Wired presents their selections for the worst 10 aircraft:

Tupolev TU- 144
The Concorde gets all the love, but Russia's Tupolev TU-144 was the first supersonic transport and the only commercial plane to exceed Mach 2. The "Concordski" was fast but plagued by bad luck. Three crashes -- including a dramatic mid-air breakup during the 1973 Paris Air Show -- relegated it largely to a lifetime delivering mail. It was mothballed in 1985 but briefly brought back a few years later as a research plane.

B.O.A.C de Havilland Comet
The Comet was the premiere commercial jet airliner and a landmark in British aeronautics when it first flew in 1949. Today it's better known for its atrocious safety record. Of the 114 Comets built, 13 were involved in fatal accidents, most of them attributed to design flaws and metal fatigue.

Hughes H-4 Hercules
The "Spruce Goose" was either a brilliant aircraft years ahead of its time or the biggest government boondoggle ever. By far the largest aircraft ever conceived — its wingspan was 319 feet — the Spruce Goose was intended to be a military transport plane. But it wasn't finished until well after World War II ended, rendering it both obsolete and irrelevant. It only flew once.

Lists like these are useful for media outlets: they interest people, they're relatively easy to pull together, and they spark controversy (because no two people will ever agree about the ten best or ten worst anything). There were some rather less successful models than the ones selected for this list, but I'll leave that for the aviation fans to hash out.