Revealed: The world’s top 20 safest airlines for 2020

Australian airline Qantas has once again topped the annual list of the world’s top 20 safest airlines for 2020, according to website AirlineRatings.com.

In selecting Qantas as the world’s safest airline for 2020, the report said that over its 99-year history, the world’s oldest continuously operating airline has amassed a “truly amazing record of firsts in operations and safety and is now accepted as the industry’s most experienced airline”.

In 2019, there were a total of 287 airline fatalities caused by 23 accidents – down from 561 fatalities in 18 accidents in 2018, according to the Aviation Safety Network.

AirlineRatings.com editor-in-chief Geoffrey Thomas said the site only looked at serious incidents in making its determinations.

“All airlines have incidents every day and many are aircraft manufacture issues, not airline operational problems,” he said. “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.”

He also added that “some countries’ incident reporting systems are weak, which further complicates matters.”

The overall list of the safest airlines was based several factors including audits from aviation’s governing and industry bodies, government audits, airline’s crash and serious incident record, profitability, industry-leading safety initiatives, and fleet age.

Top 20 safest airlines for 2020

Qantas

Air New Zealand

EVA Air

Etihad

Qatar Airways

Singapore Airlines

Emirates

Alaska Airlines

Cathay Pacific Airways

Virgin Australia

Hawaiian Airlines

Virgin Atlantic Airlines

TAP Portugal

SAS

Royal Jordanian

Swiss

Finnair

Lufthansa

Aer Lingus

KLM

Top 10 safest low cost airlines for 2020 (in alphabetical order)

Air Arabia (UAE)

Flybe (UK)

Frontier (US)

HK Express (Hong Kong)

IndiGo (India)

Jetblue (US)

Volaris (Mexico)

Vueling (Spain)

Westjet (Canada)

Wizz (Hungary)