Australian carriers ranked among top 20 airlines for safety

Qantas and Virgin are among the world’s safest airlines. Picture: Qantas.

Australia’s airlines are officially the safest in the word, with Qantas, Etihad Airways and Virgin Australia ranked among the top 20 global carriers and Jetstar Australia in the top 10 of low cost operators.

Anyone chasing a cheaper fare should avoid Kim Jong-un’s favourite carrier, North Korea’s Air Koryo, Suriname’s Bluewing Airlines, Trigana Air out of Jakarta and the accident-prone Nepalese-based quartet of Buddha Air, Nepal Airlines, Yeti Airlines and Tara Air.

According to a safety rating of 409 airlines, these carriers operate the most dangerous planes in the sky.

The safety rankings, published today by AirlineRatings.com, are based on aviation authority and government audits, the crash and serious incident records of individual airlines and the age of their fleets.

The rating system was devised with help from the International Civic Aviation Organisation, a UN body which sets standards and recommended practices for global aviation.

AirlineRatings.com chief executive Geoffrey Thomas said the key difference between the world’s safest airlines and those best not boarded is the quality of pilot training.

Qantas retains an unblemished safety record but, despite what you might remember from Rain Man, it is not the only airline never to have recorded a fatality in the jet era. Hawaiian Airlines, based in Honalulu, and Finnair, a partner airline of Qantas, also have clean safety records.

“Australia’s Qantas has been recognised by the British Advertising Standards Association in a test case as the world’s most experienced airline,’’ Mr Thomas said.

“Qantas has been the lead airline in virtually every major operational safety development over the past 60 years.’’

Mr Thomas said Qantas’s safety record was in part, a reflection of how its flight crews responded to incidents when they did occur. He cited as an example a potentially catastrophic engine failure in 2010, when a Rolls Royce engine on an Airbus A380 disintegrated shortly after it took off from Singapore.

The crew brought the plane under control and safely landed at Changi Airport.

“The fault was entirely with a fault in manufacture but the pilot skills of the Qantas crew saved the plane according to Australia’s crash investigators,’’ Mr Thomas said.

Air New Zealand was is also ranked among the safest airlines in the world. It was last year judged 2018 airline of the year by AirlineRatings.com.

AirlineRatings.com is in its fifth year of assessing and comparing the safety of airlines. Mr Thomas said the information should help people book travel holidays with peace of mind.

“Air travel is safer today than at any time in history but passengers still need to know which are the best of the best,’’ he said.

Top 20 safest airlines (alphabetical): Air New Zealand, Alaska Airlines, All Nippon Airways, British Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways, Emirates, Etihad Airways, EVA Air, Finnair, Hawaiian Airlines, Japan Airlines, KLM, Lufthansa, Qantas, Royal Jordanian Airlines, Scandinavian Airline System, Singapore Airlines, Swiss, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Australia.

Safest low-cost airlines: Aer Lingus, Flybe, Frontier, HK Express, Jetblue, Jetstar Australia, Thomas Cook, Virgin America, Vueling, Westjet.

Least safe airlines: Air Koryo, Bluewing Airlines, Buddha Air, Nepal Airlines, Tara Air, Trigana Air Services, Yeti Airlines.