Australian airline Qantas has been named the world’s safest airline for the seventh straight year.
Safety and product rating website AirlineRatings.com has announced its top 20 safest airlines and top 10 safest low-cost airlines from the 405 airlines it monitors.
AirlineRatings.com editor-in-chief Geoffrey Thomas said Qantas was a standout and “at the forefront of safety”.
“For instance, Australia’s Qantas has been recognised by the British Advertising Standards Association in a test case in 2008 as the world’s most experienced airline,” he said.
“Qantas has been the lead airline in virtually every major operational safety advancement over the past 60 years and has not had a fatality in the pure-jet era.”
The site said Qantas had been “a leader in the development of the Future Air Navigation System, the flight data recorder to monitor plane and later crew performance, automatic landings using the Global Navigation Satellite System as well as precision approaches around mountains in the cloud using RNP”.
Further, it said “Qantas was the lead airline with real-time monitoring of its engines across its fleet using satellite communications, which has enabled the airline to detect problems before they become a major safety issue”.
Virgin Australia was 10th in the rankings and Air New Zealand second.
Australia’s budget carriers Jetstar, which is involved in an industrial dispute with its pilots, and Tigerair, which failed to complete a voluntary audit, were not considered, according to Traveller.
The airlines are judged on audits from aviation governing bodies and lead associations, government audits, crash and serious incident records, fleet age, financial position and pilot training and culture.
AirlineRatings.com only look at serious incidents in making its determinations.
“All airlines have incidents every day and many are aircraft or engine manufacture issues instead of airline operational problems,” Mr Thomas said. “And it is the way the flight crew handles incidents that determines a good airline from an unsafe one. So just lumping all incidents together is very misleading.”
WORLD’S SAFEST AIRLINES 2020
1. Qantas
2. Air New Zealand
3. EVA Air
4. Etihad
5. Qatar Airways
6. Singapore Airlines
7. Emirates
8. Alaska Airlines
9. Cathay Pacific Airways
10. Virgin Australia
11. Hawaiian Airlines
12. Virgin Atlantic Airlines
13. TAP Portugal
14. SAS
15. Royal Jordanian
16. Swiss
17. Finnair
18. Lufthansa
19 Aer Lingus
20. KLM
SAFEST LOW-COST AIRLINES
1. Air Arabia
2. Flybe
3. Frontier
4. HK Express
5. IndiGo
6. Jetblue
7. Volaris
8. Vueling
9. Westjet
10. Wizz
