The safest airlines to fly with
We all seem to be flying around at the moment. Year after year, more people are using air transportation to travel to their destination. In 2017 alone, over 3.9 billion passengers from around the globe were carried from point A to point B via air transport. That’s up over a billion passengers just in the last 5 years (2.8 billion passengers in 2012). Improvemenets in airline safety standards from various international aviation organisations have played an important role in this rise and as increases in air travel continue, you should be made aware of which airliners have the best safety record before you plan your next flight.
Airliners with the best safety records
If you search online for a list of the top 10 safest airliners, you will invariably find Australian airliner Qantas at the top of the list. Qantas has been consistently ranked number one across many such top 10 list and for good reason too. Qantas (the oldest continually operating airline in the world) has never lost any of its jet airliners nor had any jet fatalities. The last fatal accident from Qantas came back in 1951, when one of its smaller aircraft crashed onto a shore of the coast of New Guinea. Since that time, Qantas has emerged as the top airline in safety for the last several years. Airlineratings.com, a website noted for its definitive airliner safety and product rating reviews, wrote that Qantas has gained an “amazing record of firsts in operations and safety” and that it is “now accepted as the industry’s most experienced airline”. But while Qantas topped their annual “World’s Safest Airliners” list for 2019 (and 2014-2017), there are a number of other companies that have been recognized for their exceptional safety and service in the aviation industry. Aside from Qantas topping their list at number one, the top 20 airliners in alphabetical order are:
– Air New Zealand
– Alaska Airline
– All Nippon Airways
– American Airline (currently possess the largest profit & airline fleet in the world)
– Austrian Airline
– British Airways
– Cathay Pacific Airways
– Emirates
– EVA Air
– Finnair
– Hawaiian Airline
– KLM Royal Dutch Airline
– Lufthansa
– Qantas
– Qatar airways
– Scandinavian Airline System
– Singapore Airline
– Swiss international airline
– United Airline
– The Virgin group airline (Atlantic and Australia).
The list was narrowed down from over 400 carriers and it was created using a wide range of factors.
Criteria for deciding the most secure airline
So aside form you now seeing some of the best airliners for safety, you should also know that air travel is extremely safe in general. 2017 marked the safest year for commercial aviation in history with a total of 10 fatal airliner accidents-44 passenger fatalities-among over 36 million flights flown that year (the accident rate was one fatal passenger flight accident for every 7,360,000 flights). In 2018, fatal accidents for every 1 million flights had decreased 16 fold since 1970, from 6.35 to 0.39. You may also be curious as to what the safety rating criteria consists of when websites like Airlineratings compile their yearly top airliner ratings. Some of the things that comprise part of their analysis for evaluating airliners are:
- Is the airliner I.O.S.A certified?
-One of the first things they consider is if the airline is IOSA certified. The IOSA (IATA operational safety audit) awards certification based on an internationally recognized evaluation system that gauges an airlines controls systems and operational management.
- Is the airline on the European Union (EU) Blacklist?
-Another criteria for ratings airline safety is whether the airliner is listed in the European Unions blacklist. The blacklist consists of airliners that are considered, among other things, to have substandard airworthiness, poor oversight from regulators, and too high of a potential risk towards passenger safety.
- Has the airline maintained a fatality free record for the past 10 years?
-In addition to the EU blacklist, whether the airline company had a fatality free record for the past 10 years is another factor in the criterion. A fatality in this context is defined as the death of passengers and/or crew while on board an aircraft due to an accident. Precarious incidents like acts of terrorism and hijackings are not counted against airlines for this criteria. A comprehensive list of airliners with the best service overall can be seen here.
So overall, flying abroad virtually any commercial airliner in most countries is very safe and secure. But to get the best service, I recommend you try to fly with one of the airline companies listed above.
