Australia's Qantas Airlines Is The Safest Airline In The World (Again)
Airline Ratings has this week announced its 2021 ranking of the safest airlines in the world with Australia’s Qantas Airlines remaining in top spot, even in spite of all the pandemic-induced changes and mandates that have been implemented and adjusted over the past year.
According to Geoffrey Thomas, Airline Ratings editor-in-chief, the airlines that stood out in the industry were at the forefront of safety, innovation, and launching of new aircraft.
Standout features that earned Qantas top spot included the development of innovative safety plans, including Future Air Navigation System, real-time engine monitoring and automatic landings using Global Navigation Satellite System. Qantas was also one of the first airlines to announce its plans to require travellers to have the Covid-19 vaccine before flying internationally.
“All airlines have incidents every day and many are aircraft manufacture issues, not airline operational problems,” Thomas explained in a press release. “It is the way the flight crew handles incidents that determines a good airline from an unsafe one.”
Other factors that go into the ranking system include the airline’s crash or serious incident record, audits from aviation’s governing and industry bodies as well as government audits, and safety initiatives—especially Covid-19 mandates and protocols.
While Qantas Airlines may have taken top spot for another year there are a handful of other airlines that are quite close behind. “In fact, there is very little between the top 20, they are all standouts,” Thomas added.
The other airlines that ranked just behind Qantas include Qatar Airways, Air New Zealand, Singapore Airlines, Emirates, EVA Air, Etihad Airways, Alaska Airlines, Cathay Pacific Airways, British Airways, as well as Virgin Australia/Virgin Atlantic.
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