Originally Posted by
Worcester
Does make you wonder though when you read about the conditions of the workers building the Qatar football stadiums. A team of BBC reporters were recently
arrested for talking to people they were not meant to.
It seems that companies there are not expected to oporate in a transparent way, and those who raise concerns are arrested or worse.
I wonder therefore what the safety culture is like at these airlines.
Given safety is a truly existential issue for every airline that tries to present itself as being a decent regional competitor or global competitor, I would say that safety and maintenance is the one thing they wouldn't cut corners on.
Take Ryanair with its extremely low fares (indeed, only through ancillary revenue from things like bag charges and boarding pass printing is it profitable) -
Michael O'Leary knows that safety is the only thing between profits and bankruptcy:
Is there any such thing as bad PR? "Only if it's about safety. Otherwise, probably not."
Given
ICAO's recent audit of the UAE aviation regulator and the fact that Qantas, which prides itself on having an excellent safety record uses DXB as a base for its A380s (
http://www.icao.int/safety/Pages/USOAP-Results.aspx) and the past history of incidents (or lack thereof),
http://www.jacdec.de/airline-safety-ranking-2015/,
http://www.thenational.ae/business/i...afest-airlines I would say that the odds of being involved in a safety incident on an EK plane are comparable or safer than being on any other major network carrier competitor with historically high standards.