Qantas airlines named safest air carrier in the world
As the saying goes, you’re much more likely to die in a car wreck on the way to the airport than you are to die in a horrific plane crash.
That saying is especially true for Australiabased Qantas Airlines, which was named the safest airline in the world by AirlineRatings. com.
The aviation industry website notes Qantas’ impressive record when it comes to its total number of fatal plane crashes in what it calls the ‘jet era,’ which it describes as being from 1951 to the present.
In the time period, Qantas has had precisely zero fatal plane crashes - a fact made famous in the 1988 film Rain Man, in which Dustin Hoffman’s character, Raymond Babbitt, refuses to fly on any airline other than Qantas because of its stellar safety record.The website lists 10 airlines that it considers the safest - and that, like Qantas, have a seven-star rating for safety and in-flight product.
In addition to Qantas, the website lists Air New Zealand, All Nippon Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways, Emirates, Etihad Airways, Eva Air, Royal Jordanian, Singapore Airlines and Virgin Atlantic as the 10 safest airlines in the world. No U.S.based airlines made it into the top 10.
The website also ranked the least safe airlines, most of which are based in Asia.
According to the rankings, the Kazakh airline Scat, Afghan airline Kam Air and the Surinamese Bluewing Airline each have only a one-star rating.
Bluewing and Kam Air are amongst a number of airlines banned from operating in the European Union. Despite a few bad apples, fear not - the airline industry is one of the safest industries in the world, much due to the fact that it is so heavily monitored.
As the website notes, most airlines go years without experiencing a major safety incident. Additionally, the number of air-travel fatalities was at a record low, according to the Aviation Safety Network.
In other words, there often is little to distinguish the safest, most reliable carriers from others that may have encountered an incident. And according to the survey, 137 of the 448 airlines the website reviewed have a seven-star safety rating.