AirlineRatings reviews and grades the safety of airlines around the worlds and has named Qantas as the world’s safest airline in 2020, followed by Air New Zealand, Eva Air, Etihad and Qatar Airways. You can find the Top 20 safest airlines in my post below, as well as the safest Low Cost Carriers!
Qantas, the Australian flag carrier, is named yet again the World’s Safest Airline of 2019. With its unblemished, fatality-free flight record over its 98-year history and the many firsts in safety and operations initiatives, Qantas has earned this distinction! They have been atop the safety ratings for years!
While many airlines achieve a perfect 7-out-of-7 safety rating, some airlines just do better. For this Top 20 list of safest airlines, AirlineRatings considered the airline’s record of crash and serious incidents, fleet age and leading safety initiatives. While all airline may encounter serious incidents, it’s how the pilots and crews are trained and how experienced they are to respond to the issue, that can make all the difference. Or the age of the fleet might have an impact on how often those incidents might occur.
Without further ado, here is the the Top 20 list of safest airlines in 2020:
- Qantas
- Air New Zealand
- Eva Air
- Etihad
- Qatar Air
- Singapore Airlines
- Emirates
- Alaska Airlines
- Cathay Pacific Airways
- Virgin Australia
- Hawaiian Airlines
- Virgin Atlantic Airlines
- TAP Portugal
- SAS
- Royal Jordanian
- Swiss
- Finnair
- Lufthansa
- Aer Lingus
- KLM
Noticeably absent from the list are the top 3 US airlines, United, Delta and American Airlines, due to an increased number of incidents encountered and the impact it had.
AirlineRatings is the only website regularly reviewing and rating the safety of the airlines we fly and it’s the only methodical approach publicly available. They include the (voluntary) IOSA airline audit results, the ICAO country audit results as well as US and EU safety endorsements and a fatality free safety record to rate the airlines. I use their ratings in all my airline reviews and believe it’s the best out there – certainly better than “expert” reviews that say “I felt safe on my flight with airline x from A to B”!
In a separate group, AirlineRatings also named the Top 10 Safest Low-Cost Carriers (LCC), in alphabetical order (no ranking): Air Arabia, Flybe, Frontier, HK Express, IndiGo, Jetblue, Volaris, Vueling, Westjet, and Wizz. It’s important to note that all these LCCs have passed the voluntary IOSA Safety Audit! Many of the largest LCC, including RyanAir, AirAsia, Lion Air and Cebu Pacific have not taken the audit and are not on the list – which is a shame and worth considering when buying your next ticket!
You can read all the details at AirlineRatings!
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