Australia’s flag carrier has been crowned as the safest airline in the world for the seventh year in a row.
Airline safety and rating website AirlineRatings.com compiled an annual list of the world’s safest airlines based on a series of criteria including fleet age, pilot training and culture, crash and serious incident records, financial standing, and audits from aviation bodies and governments.
Qantas earned the number one spot out of 405 carriers around the world, extending its winning streak since 2013. In 2018, the airline received the accolade jointly when the website could not find the clear winner.
“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 jet era,” the website’s editor-in-chief Geoffrey Thomas said.
Air New Zealand came in second, followed by Taiwan’s EVA Air in the third. Rounding up the top 10 were Etihad Airways, Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines, Emirates, Alaska Airlines, Cathay Pacific and Virgin Australia.
Thomas said the list only took serious incidents into account. “All airlines have incidents every day, and many are aircraft or engine manufacture issues, not airline operational problems,” he 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.
“Our top 20 safest airlines 2020 are always at the forefront of safety innovation, operational excellence and the launching of new more advanced aircraft like the Airbus A350 and Boeing 787.”
The website also named the joint awardees for the world’s safest budget airline title: Air Arabia, Flybe, Frontier, HK Express, IndiGo, Jetblue, Volaris, Vueling, Westjet and Wizz Air.
World’s safest airlines for 2020
- Qantas
- Air New Zealand
- EVA Air
- Etihad Airways
- Qatar Airways
- Singapore Airlines
- Emirates
- Alaska Airlines
- Cathay Pacific
- Virgin Australia
- Hawaiian Airlines
- Virgin Atlantic
- TAP Air Portugal
- SAS
- Royal Jordanian
- Swiss
- Finnair
- Lufthansa
- Aer Lingus
- KLM