A new website that rates airline safety has given full marks to three Australian carriers: Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin Australia.
The website Airline Ratings has classified 425 carriers worldwide, giving them a separate rating out of seven for ‘safety’ and ‘product’ quality, with Qantas the only one in Australia to score top marks in both categories.
While receiving top marks for safety, Virgin Australia and Jetstar only scored 5 and 3.5 (out of seven) respectively for product .
The website was created by Australian aviation editor and author Geoffrey Thomas, who says the ratings relate to data compiled from aviation governing bodies, government audits and the airline fatality records.
“Air travel has never been safer and we found a record number of airlines – 137 – with a seven-star ranking, while 43 have just three stars or less,” said Thomas. “As someone who typically flies more than 75 days a year, I can tell you, it’s important to know more about the airline you’re about to hop onto than merely what it’s serving for lunch!”
“In some parts of the world, people may be better off considering road or train options than risking a flight.”
Etihad, Air New Zealand, Emirates and British Airways all scored the maximum seven for safety while Tiger Airways and Air Asia X both scored fours stars each.
Lion Air (Indonesia), Yeti Airlines (Nepal), Ariana Afghan Airways, Yangon Airlines (Myanmar), Air India Express and Airlines PNG are amongst the website’s lowest rated airlines.
The site also gives advice on how to combat the fear of flying.
For more information see AirlineRatings.com
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The rating system re safety is seriously flawed. I undertook a review of airline safety rating methods for BHP in 1996 and advised them of the correct way to rate airlines.
The best airlines have a fatal incident rate of no more than 1 fatal incident (a flight where someone is killed) per 10,000,000 flights. As a result the rating system should relate to numbers of flights not years.
In the USA in 2008 there were a total of 13,500,000 air carrier flights (flights of planes with a seating capacity of at least 60 or a payload capacity of more than 8.17 tonnes). If all those operators had safety ratings in the range of the best 30 – 35 world airlines then you would expect on average one flight per annum where at least one person is killed.
In contrast in 2010/11 there were 750,000 domestic and international flights. If all those operators had safety ratings in the range of the best 30 – 35 world airlines then you would expect on average one flight every 20 years where at least one person is killed.
And as a comment, Qantas has not flown enough flights to claim it is very safe – it undertook 220,000 Australian flights in 2010/11 (99,000 by Qantas link). Adding international flights that did not start of end in Australia would bring the total to no more than around 320,000 flights per annum (the average for 1986-96 was 96,000 flights by Qantas alone). To date the writer estimates Qantas and Qantaslink have only flown 7,000,000 to 8,000,000 flights – so the fact they have not had a fatality does not put them in the worlds best class, especially given the number of serious near misses they have had.
“In contrast in 2010/11 there were 750,000 domestic and international flights” should read “In contrast in 2010/11 there were 750,000 domestic and international flights across Australia.”