Airline safety rating website AirlineRatings.com has named Qantas as the world’s safest carrier for 2020, coming atop a list of the safest 20 airlines globally.
The Australian airline was chosen ahead of 408 other airlines that the site monitors, based on metrics such as fleet age, crash and serious incident record, financial position and pilot training, audits by government and industry bodies, profitability and safety initiatives.
“These airlines are clear standouts in the airline industry and are at the forefront of safety,” AirlineRatings.com Editor-in-Chief Geoffrey Thomas said in a statement.
“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 pure-jet era.”
Air New Zealand, EVA Air, Etihad and Qatar Airways round up the top five.
Notable exceptions from the list includes ANA, British Airways, American Airlines, Japan Airlines and Delta – all of which have made the top 20 in previous years.
The website also revealed the safest low-cost airlines, with the top 10 all ranked equally and listed in alphabetical order. European carriers like Vueling, Wizz and Flybe make the list alongside North American low-cost airlines, Westjet and Jetblue.
Thomas says the site only looks at serious incidents when determining the safest airline.
He continued: “All airlines have incidents every day, and many are aircraft or engine manufacture issues, not airline operational problems. 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.”
At the end of 2019, AirlineRatings.com announced the world’s best airlines for 2020 with Singapore Airlines being knocked off the top spot by Air New Zealand.
