This has been a busy week for most people. Workers are back attheir jobs after the holidays, and children are back in school.Business and leisure travelers are planning to trips to locationsas exotic as Dubai and as mundane as Omaha. But wherever they’regoing, travelers hope to travel safely and arrive on time.

To find out what those safe airlines are, many travelers turn toAirlineRatings.com, which calls itself “theworld’s only safety and product rating website.” On Jan. 6,AirlineRatings.com announced its top 20 safest airlines and top 10safest low-cost airlines for 2016 from the 407 it monitors.Carriers that write Aviation insurance also are interested inairlines’ safety ratings as another measure for quantifyingrisk.

Leading the way for the third year in a row is Australia’sQantas, which has a fatality free record — an amazingaccomplishment. Expanded from the top 10 in prior years, here arethe airlines making up the remainder of the top 20, in alphabeticalorder:

• Air New Zealand
• Alaska Airlines
• All Nippon Airlines
• American Airlines

(Photo: Kamran Jebreili/AP Photo)

• Cathay Pacific Airways
• Emirates Airlines (United Arab Emirates)
• Etihad Airways (United Arab Emirates)
• EVA Air (Taiwanese airline)
• Finnair

Hawaiian Airlines is the largest airline in Hawaii. Itis the eighth largest commercial airline in the US, and is based inHonolulu, Hawaii. (Photo: Ted S. Warren/AP Photo)

• Hawaiian Airlines
• Japan Airlines
• KLM
• Lufthansa
• Scandinavian Airline System

(Photo: David J. Phillip/AP Photo)

• Singapore Airlines
• Swiss
• United Airlines
• Virgin Atlantic
• Virgin Australia

Airlines in italics were also on the 2015 list oftop-10 safest airlines.

Launched in June 2013, the site rates each airline for safetybased on a comprehensive analysis using information from theFederal Aviation Administration and the International CivilAviation Organization as well as government audits and eachairline’s fatality record. AirlineRating.com’s editorial team alsoexamined each airline’s operational history, incident records andoperational excellence to arrive at its top 20 safest airlines.

Related: Nervous flyer? Here are the 10 safest airlines for2015

(Photo: Peter Morrison/AP Photo)

Safest low-cost airlines

The editors at AirlineRatings.com also recognized that more andmore travelers in all classes are looking for bargains and areflying more low-cost carriers than ever before. Given the intensecompetition in the airline industry, especially for regionalroutes, this trend is sure to continue in 2016. To meet the needsof bargain-hunting travelers, the AirlineRatings.com editors alsoidentified their top 10 safest low cost airlines. The editors notethat the airlines in their top 10 have all passed the stringentIOSA requirements and have excellent safety records.

Here are the top 10 low-cost airlines, in alphabeticalorder:

• Aer Lingus
• Flybe (British low-cost regional airline based in Exeter, andthe largest regional airline based in Europe)
• HK Express (a Hong Kong-based low-cost airline)
• Jetblue
• Jetstar Australia (part of Jetstar Group, a groupof value-based carriers providing service across Australia, NewZealand and the Asia Pacific region)

• Thomas Cook (a British charter airline)
• TUI Fly (German airline)
• Virgin America
• Volaris (Mexico’s second largest airline after Aeroméxico)
• Westjet (a Canadian airline)

Airlines in italics were also on the 2015 list oftop-10 safest low-cost airlines.

(Photo: Shutterstock)

How the ratings are determined

The airlines can earn up to seven stars, based on how well theairline meets the following safetycriteria. Of the 407 airlines surveyed, the editors explain,148 have the top seven-star safety ranking but almost 50 have justthree stars or less. There are 10 airlines with only one star andthese airlines are from Indonesia, Nepal and Surinam.

• Is the airline IOSA or ISSA certified? If yes,two stars are awarded; if not, no star is given. IOSA stands forIATA [International Air Transport Association] Operational SafetyAudit. ISSA certification, which stands for IATA Standard SafetyAssessment, is similar to IOSA, but designed for airlines thatoperate small regional aircraft.
• Is the airline on the European UnionBlacklist? If no, a full star is awarded; if yes, then nostar is given. The EU Blacklist is defined as a list of airlinesbanned from flying into European airspace because of safetyconcerns arising from alleged poor aircraft maintenance orregulatory oversight.
• Has the airline maintained a fatality-free record forthe past 10 years? If yes, the airline is awarded a fullstar; if not, then no star is given.
• Is the airline FAA endorsed? If yes a fullstar is awarded; if not, no star is given.
• Does the country of airline origin meet all eight ICAOsafety parameters? If yes, two stars are awarded to theairline. However, if the one criteria that is below the average isso by less than 15% it is considered a pass. If five to seven ofthe criteria are met, one star is awarded. If the country onlymeets up to four criteria, no star is given.
• Has the airline’s fleet been grounded by the country’sgoverning aviation safety authority because of safetyconcerns? If yes, an additional star will be taken off thetotal for five years from the time of grounding.
• Does the airline operate only Russian-builtaircraft? If yes, an additional star will be taken off thetotal.

(AP Photo)

To put airline safety into perspective, AirlineRatings.comeditors offer the following statistics:

• According to Aviation Safety Network data, the 16 accidents in 2015with 560 fatalities were below the 10-year average of 31 accidentsand 714 fatalities. In comparison, in 2014 there were 21 fatal accidents with 986fatalities.
• A record 3.6 billion passengers flew on 34 million flights in2015 on all the world’s airlines combined.
• In 1965 there were 87 crashes killing 1,597 when airlinescarried only 141 million passengers—5% of the number of passengerscarried in 2015.

However and wherever you travel, bon voyage!

See the full report at AirlineRatings.com.

Have you Liked us on Facebook?