Qantas given top safety ranking
A STUDY by an aviation website has put Australia’s national carrier, Qantas, at the top of its latest safety rankings for the world’s airlines.
AirlineRatings.com, which was launched in 2013, also rated the Australian airline as the world’s safest in its previous assessment. The website says it is “related” to several Australian media companies, including West Australian Newspapers.
In its research, which monitored 449 airlines, the organisation based its rankings on seven safety criteria.
These include whether the airline has an International Air Transport Association operational safety certification, whether it is endorsed by the Federal Aviation Authority, whether the country of origin meets all the safety parameters of the International Civil Aviation Organisation and whether the airline’s fleet has ever been grounded due to safety concerns.
A star is taken off the total rating if an airline operates only Russian-built aircraft.
The editors at Airlinerankings.com praised Qantas for its “fatality-free record in the jet era”, as well as its “extraordinary record of firsts in safety and operations”, adding that it “is now accepted as the world’s most experienced airline”.
The airline featured in a scene in the film Rain Man, when the character played by Dustin Hoffman cites it as the only international carrier never to have crashed (although aviation experts will cite several fatal accidents in the prejet era, the last of which was in 1951).
Budget airlines were also ranked, with South Africa’s Kulula.com, Monarch Airlines and Thomas Cook among those appearing in the top 10.
Of those assessed, 149 airlines achieved the full seven-star safety rating. At the other end of the scale, four airlines had only one star for safety: Kam Air, Nepal Airlines, Scat and Tara Air.
In a broader assessment of safety in 2014, AirlineRatings.com writers cited “some of the most tragic and bizarre incidents in modern history”, from fatal accidents to “unprecedented” crashes.
But they also noted that despite a higher level of fatalities than average for the past decade, the number of fatal accidents (21) was, in fact, a record low. In 2014, there was just one fatal accident for every 1.3 million flights. — © The