Safest Airlines 2017

Calvin Lam

7 years ago

The safest airline ratings have just been published in January 2017. CX and QF again claim the top spot! Read all about it here!

There are 2 popular rankings in the airline industry – The rankings from AirlineRatings.com which just put Qantas at number one for the fourth year in a row; and Germany’s Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Centre, or JACDEC which just named Cathay Pacific as the safest airline in it’s 2017 rankings. While each has their own evaluation criteria (e.g. JACDEC named QF 9th safest this time – still a 4 rank jump up from previous), they do provide some good information for all travellers. Below are their summarised results:-

AirlineRatings.com, a safety and product rating website launched in June 2013, has announced its top twenty safest airlines and top ten safest low-cost airlines for 2017 from the 425 it monitors. Top of the list for the fourth year is Australia’s Qantas.

Making up the remainder of the top twenty in alphabetical order are: Air New Zealand, Alaska Airlines, All Nippon Airways, British Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways, Delta Air Lines, Etihad Airways, EVA Air, Finnair, Hawaiian Airlines, Japan Airlines, KLM, Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airline System, Singapore Airlines, Swiss, United Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia.

In making its selections AirlineRatings.com takes into account numerous factors that include; audits from aviation’s governing bodies and lead associations; government audits; airline’s crash and serious incident record; profitability and fleet age. AirlineRating.com’s editorial team, one of the world’s most awarded and experienced, also examined each airline’s fleet history and its track record of initiating new safety technology to arrive at its top 20 safest airlines.

AirlineRatings.com editors also identified their top ten safest low-cost airlines. These are in alphabetical order: Aer Lingus, Flybe, HK Express, Jetblue, Jetstar Australia, Jetstar Asia, Thomas Cook, Virgin America, Vueling and Westjet. Unlike a number of low-cost carriers, these airlines have all passed the stringent International Air Transport Association Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) which has over 1000 audit items and have excellent safety records. See more here.

JACDEC based it’s ranking mainly on airline incident records – it overs all aspects of aviation safety matters, and has been a dependable source of information since 1989. It claims to have done more than 15.000 accident analysis.. and with more than a million individual details. It constantly monitors and publishes airline safety related information and news. It’s latest 2017 safety rankings have just been published and is shown as above; and reproduced below from traveller.com site with links to recent reviews. There is also a link to the ‘World’s worst airlines’ at the bottom (for information)

The world’s safest airlines in 2016 (JACDEC rankings)

(Click on the links for Traveller‘s most recent reviews of the airlines)