The Safest Airlines to Fly in 2020

AirlineRatings.com, the website that houses safety and product ratings for 405 carriers across the globe, just released its list of the World’s Safest Airlines for 2020. Some of the factors taken into account included fleet age, serious incidents, government audits, pilot training, and safety culture. Editor-in-Chief of the website, Geoffrey Thomas, explained why small events were not looked at, “All airlines have incidents every day. It is the way the flight crew handles incidents that determines a good airline from an unsafe one.”

2020’s Safest Airline

Coming in 1st for essentially its seventh year in a row (it technically tied in 2018 because the website could not define a clear winner), Australia-based Qantas can once again sport its “Safest Airline in the World” title. Being one of the few carriers to never suffer a catastrophic aircraft accident, it is no surprise Qantas is at the top of the list. Thomas 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.”

Runner Ups

Australia’s neighbor, Air New Zealand, came in second place. Asia had a good run in the top slots, with Taiwan-based EVA Air taking third, and Abu-Dhabi-based Etihad taking fourth.

The last six airlines to make the top 10 were, in order: Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines, Emirates, Alaska Airlines, Cathay Pacific, and Virgin Australia.

The airlines taking the 11-20 slots are Hawaiian Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, TAP Air Portugal, SAS, Royal Jordanian, Swiss, Finnair, Lufthansa, Aer Lingus, and KLM.

Didn’t Make the Cut

Interestingly enough, Alaska Airlines is the only U.S. carrier to make the top 10 list, even though all three legacies, American, United, and Delta, were on it last year. Furthermore, British Airways, ANA, and Japan Airlines also failed to make the cut.

Thomas explained the reasoning behind British Airways, “[It was a] combination of fleet age [average 13.8 years] and the number of incidents… which were not life-threatening but there were a lot of them compared to other airlines of similar size.”

He went on to explain that the high number of allegedly intoxicated pilot events on the three U.S. carriers, JAL, and ANA bumped them lower on the 2020 list.

Safest Low-Cost Carriers of 2020

The website also released a list of the top safest low-cost carriers around the world. They are listed equally in alphabetical order: Air Arabia, Flybe, Frontier, HK Express, IndiGo, Jetblue, Volaris, Vueling, Westjet, and Wizz Air.