The 20 Safest Airlines in the World (A List That Doesn’t Include Delta)
Jackie Reddy January 07, 2019
Australian flag carrier Qantas has been chosen by AirlineRatings.com as the world’s safest airline for 2019. In explaining its pick, the site noted that the airline had an “amazing record” when it comes to safety, a point that has held for nearly a century of operations by the Australian carrier.
Australian flag carrier Qantas has been lauded as 2019’s safest airline according to the latest rankings from AirlineRatings.com.
Speaking of its pick for the top spot, the website said, “In selecting Qantas as the world’s safest airline for 2019, AirlineRatings.com editors noted that over its 98-year history the world’s oldest continuously operating airline has amassed an amazing record of firsts in operations and safety and is now accepted as the industry’s most experienced airline.”
The website also praised the technological advances developed and deployed by Qantas to help ensure the safety of its fleet.
“The Australian airline has been a leader in the development of: Future Air Navigation System; the flight data recorder to monitor plane and later crew performance; automatic landings using Global Navigation Satellite System as well as precision approaches around mountains in cloud using RNP (required navigation performance). 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,” it stated.
The rest of the website’s picks for the top 20 of the world’s safest airlines can be viewed here and are:
- Air New Zealand
- Alaska Airlines
- All Nippon Airways
- American Airlines
- Austrian Airlines
- British Airways
- Cathay Pacific Airways
- Emirates
- EVA Air
- Finnair
- Hawaiian Airlines
- KLM, Lufthansa
- Qantas
- Qatar
- Scandinavian Airline System
- Singapore Airlines
- Swiss
- United Airlines
- The Virgin group of airlines (Atlantic and Australia)
Geoffrey Thomas, the website’s editor-in-chief, explained that, when it comes to the occurrence of aircraft incidents and safety, only major incidents are taken into account when compiling rankings.
“All airlines have incidents every day and many are aircraft manufacture issues, not airline operational problems. 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,” he said.
“And some countries incident reporting systems are weak further complicating matters,” Thomas added.
[Photo: Shutterstock]
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What a joke! American, Alaska, Air New Zealand, British, Swiss (Swissair) Lufthansa have had a few awful crashes.
@"I’d like to see their methodology." It's one click away if you read the article. Here you go, in case that's one click too many: "In making its evaluation, AirlineRatings.com takes into account a comprehensive range of factors that include: audits from aviation’s governing and industry bodies; government audits; airline’s crash and serious incident record; profitability, industry-leading safety initiatives, and fleet age."
ANA? Even after their pilots (or was it a fly attendant) drinking on the job? :)
Qantas and Virgin = Australian air travel is in very safe hands.
I'd like to see their methodology. If an airline logs comparatively more miles taking off or landing in airports prone to bad weather or heavy congestion, they can't reasonably be compared with the track record of airlines not using such airports as much.