Qantas tops world safety rankings for fatality free record as Tigerair lets us down

AS Qantas celebrated its safety record with a new deal for those with frequent flyer points, one Australian airline didn’t get full marks for safety.

Qantas Airbus A380. Photo for story on Brisbane Airport plane spotters. CREDIT: Lance Broad.

FOR the third year running, Qantas has been crowned the world’s safest airline for its “extraordinary fatality-free record in the jet era”.

Independent airline review website AirlineRatings.com awarded Qantas top spot, out of more than 200 carriers worldwide.

Budget partner Jetstar and rival Virgin Australia were also given the maximum seven-stars for safety but another Aussie carrier rated just four stars.

Reason to smile ... Qantas CEO Alan Joyce and Emirates president Tim Clark both head up airlines rated seven out of seven for safety. Pic: Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg

Tigerair Australia attributed its “disappointing” result to the fact the airline was grounded in the last five years, (in 2011) and it had not paid for an IATA Operational Safety Audit certificate.

Any airline without IOSA accreditation automatically lost two stars, and the penalty for a grounding was one star.

The four-star rating put Tigerair in the same company as South Africa’s Mango Airlines, Thai Airways, and Thai Lion Air.

Tigerair spokeswoman Vanessa Regan said the airline had an excellent safety record and operated under the same strict guidelines as all other airlines in Australia.

Bottom of the class ... Tigerair Australia was awarded just four out of seven stars for safety. Pic: James Morgan

“Tigerair has come a long way over the past two years with continuous improvement across every key business metric including safety, enhanced on time performance and the lowest cancellation rate of all major domestic airlines,” said Ms Regan.

“Numerous products and innovations have been launched over recent times to make flying Tigerair better than ever and our customer satisfaction has never been stronger.”

A Qantas spokesman welcomed the award for being the world’s “safest airline” and said it “belonged to the thousands of people who made safety their number one priority”.

“It’s also a reflection of the fact everyone involved in aviation from airlines to regulators and aircraft manufacturers, work to share learnings and make constant improvements to keep flying the safest way to travel,” he said.

Economy travel ... Frequent flyers will soon need fewer points to land a seat in Qantas international economy. Pic: Supplied.

A total of 148 airlines achieved a seven-star rating, while 50 were rated three-stars or less, including ten that were given just one star.

They were mainly Indonesian carriers, such as Lion Air, TransNusa and Sriwijaya Air and Nam Air.

Qantas marked its achievement by announcing a further reduction in the number of frequent flyer points needed to score an economy class seat on selected overseas routes.

Up to ten per cent fewer points will be needed for routes such as Perth-Singapore, Brisbane-Hong Kong, Sydney-London and Melbourne-LA and taxes, fees and carrier charges have also been slashed by up to 40 per cent.

A spokeswoman said the cuts were designed to maintain competitiveness.