Despite its financial difficulties, TWA has compiled an exemplary safety record over the past three decades, but it has had a star-crossed history of being victimized by foreign terrorists.

TWA's history as a major overseas carrier has made it a repeated target of foreign terrorism, often focused around Athens. The plane that crashed Wednesday had flown in from Athens just hours before.

But the St. Louis-based airline hasn't had a fatal accident that wasn't related to terrorism since 1974, the year a TWA Boeing jet crashed in Virginia, killing all 92 people aboard.

The airline ranked as the sixth-safest major carrier in the world over the past 10 years in a Newsday study of aviation safety, which calculated the number of flights without a fatal accident.

"TWA has had an excellent safety record," said Arnold Barnett, professor of statistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an expert on aviation safety. "It's not a record that's demonstrably superior to other American carriers, but it's very good."

The airline is smaller than most other major American carriers, flying only 283,000 flights in the 12 months ending in April, a third the number operated by USAir, United, American and Delta airlines. Its fleet is also the oldest, with planes that average nearly 20 years old. And it has had financial difficulty as well, having been in bankruptcy twice in recent years. But experts say its aging fleet and financial difficulty have not seemed to compromise its safety commitments. "There's nothing to suggest problems in the way it maintains its planes and trains its pilots," Barnett said.

"I don't think they cut corners," said Paul Czysz, professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering at Parks College in St. Louis. "They can't afford to. They know the age of the fleet."

Newsday's ranking of U.S. airline safety since 1985, which does not include terrorist incidents, shows TWA ranks fifth among the nine major carriers, with an average of 3.8 million flights without a fatal accident. American, with one accident in 9.5 million flights since 1985, ranks at the top of the list.

Among all the world airlines, only American, Delta, Continental, Lufthansa and SAS had better records in avoiding fatal accidents, according to Newsday's ranking of international aviation last year.

But the airline has repeatedly been a target. In 1974, a bomb in the cargo bay of a TWA Boeing 707 went off as the plane was approaching Athens, sending 88 people to their deaths.

Eleven years later, a TWA flight from Athens to Rome was hijacked by Lebanese Shiite Muslims, who killed a U.S. serviceman before releasing hostages in Beirut. And in 1986, a bomb in the passenger compartment of a TWA Boeing 727 landing at Athens blew a hole in the fuselage, and four people fell to their deaths.