Travel Tips

Travel Tip: Safest Airlines

A report came out recently, ranking the safest and most dangerous airlines in the world. These results are always interesting to review, but always take that kind of information with a grain of salt.

The report came from the German-based Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Centre. They examine hull-loss accidents and incidents over the course of 30 years in relation to the number of passenger miles traveled.

They found that Finnair is the safest airline, followed by Air New Zealand and Cathay Pacific.

No U.S. airline even cracked the top 10—JetBlue was the highest ranked in 14th place.

SkyWest ranked as the 10th least-safe airline.

So does this mean that you are not safe flying domestic airlines?  Of course not! There are so many factors to be considered when comparing airlines it would be impossible to have one report tell the whole story.

Many of the lower-ranking airlines have evolved in 30 years, with new safety standards and equipment. And the study doesn’t take into account whether the airline was at fault for the accidents.

And for what it is worth, in the Swiss-based Air Transport Rating Agency’s list of ten safest airlines, four of them are U.S. airlines.

For more information, visit the Airlines and Safety & Security archives.

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