The world’s safest airlines for 2020 revealed

Australia’s national airline, Qantas tops the list
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Qantas has been named as the world’s safest airline for 2020 by safety and product-rating website, AirlineRatings.com.

The Australian national carrier tops the list of the world’s 20 safest airlines, which has been collated from the 409 airlines the site monitors.

The safety of the airlines is measured by fleet age, crash and serious incident record, financial position and pilot training, audits by government and industry bodies, profitability and safety initiatives.

Air New Zealand, EVA Air, Etihad and Qatar Airways round up the top five.

Top 20 safest airlines according to AirlineRatings.com

1. Qantas

2. Air New Zealand

3. EVA Air

4. Etihad

5. Qatar Airways

6. Singapore Airlines

7. Emirates

8. Alaska Airlines

9. Cathay Pacific Airways

10. Virgin Australia

11. Hawaiian Airlines

12. Virgin Atlantic Airlines

13. TAP Portugal

14. SAS

15. Royal Jordanian

16. Swiss

17. Finnair

18. Lufthansa

19. Aer Lingus

20. KLM

"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.”

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.

Top 10 safest low-cost airlines according to AirlineRatings.com

Air Arabia

Flybe

Frontier

HK Express

IndiGo

Jetblue

Volaris

Vueling

Westjet

Wizz

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.

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