You may have already decided where you want to travel this year, but how do you plan to get there?
AirlineRatings.com’s report on the world’s 20 safest airlines for 2019 might give you some ideas.
Qantas Airlines, based in Australia, received the top ranking, a position it held previously from 2013 – 2017.
The other 19 airlines did not receive a specific rank, but according to AirlineRatings editor-in-chief Geoffrey Thomas: “The top 20 safest airlines are all exceptional operations and the benchmark for excellence when its comes to safety and reliability.”
The safety and product rating website, also based in Australia, compared 405 airlines around the world on range of criteria including fleet age, profitability, crash and serious incident reports, and government and aviation governing body audits.
Here’s the full alphabetical list of the top 20 airlines:
- Air New Zealand
- Alaska Airlines
- All Nippon Airways
- American Airlines
- Austrian Airlines
- British Airways
- Cathay Pacific Airways
- Emirates
- EVA Air
- Finnair
- Hawaiian Airlines
- KLM
- Lufthansa
- Qantas
- Qatar Airways
- Scandinavian Airline System
- Singapore Airlines
- Swiss
- United Airlines
- Virgin (Atlantic and Australia)
United returned to the list after failing to crack the top 20 a year ago, thanks to the addition of a significant number of new airplanes.
Japan Airways and Etihad fell off the list this year due to poor pilot behavior and major financial losses.
AirlineRatings also ranked the top 10 budget airlines with regards to safety. In alphabetical order, they are:
- Flybe
- Frontier
- HK Express
- Jetblue
- Jetstar Australia / Asia
- Thomas Cook
- Volaris
- Vueling
- Westjet
- Wizz
Of course, accidents involving airplanes are incredibly rare. Still, if you’re the safety-minded type, you may want to use these rankings to determine your next ticket purchase.