World’s safest airlines for 2019 named

After one of the deadliest 12 months on record for travellers, the safest airlines and budget carriers have been selected.

AirlineRatings.com, the world’s only safety and product rating website, has announced Qantas as its safest airline for 2019.

Qantas has been named the world’s safest airline for 2019 after one of the deadliest 12 months on record for air travellers.

AirlineRatings.com, the world’s only safety and product rating website, announced Qantas as its safest airline from the 405 it monitors while Virgin Australia made the top 20 and Jetstar was named as one of the safest low-cost carriers.

The site’s editor-in-chief Geoffrey Thomas said Qantas was a standout in the industry and was at the forefront of safety, innovation and the design and launching of new aircraft.

“For instance, Australia’s Qantas has been recognised by the British Advertising Standards Association in a test case in 2008 as the world’s most experienced airline,” said Mr Thomas. “It is extraordinary that 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.

“But Qantas is not alone. Long established airlines such as Hawaiian and Finnair have perfect records in the jet era.”

The top 20 are the who’s who of airlines and in alphabetical order 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 Airways, Scandinavian Airline System, Singapore Airlines, Swiss, and United Airlines and Virgin group of airlines (Atlantic and Australia).

According to Aviation Safety Network, 2018 was one of the deadliest on record with 556 people killed in airliner accidents compared with 44 in 2017, which was the safest year on record. Last year’s worst civilian accident was in October when a Lion Air plane crashed in Indonesia killing 189.

A Qantas Airbus A380 takes off from Sydney.

Responding to public interest, the AirlineRatings.com editors also identified their top 10 safest low-cost airlines.

These are in alphabetical order: Flybe, Frontier, HK Express, Jetblue, Jetstar Australia/Asia, Thomas Cook, Volaris, Vueling, Westjet and Wizz.

In making its selections AirlineRatings.com takes into account numerous critical factors that include audits from aviation’s governing bodies and lead associations; government audits; airline’s crash and serious incident record, fleet age and profitability.

AirlineRatings.com also announced its lowest ranked (one star and two star) airlines which are; Ariana Afghan Airlines, Bluewing Airlines, Kam Air, Tara Air and Trigana Air Service.