They say that flying is safer than driving. In fact, according to travel statistics, the odds of dying in a car crash is 1 in 98 in a lifetime, while the odds of dying in a plane wreck is 1 in 7,178 in a lifetime. Still, when plane accidents do occur, they're usually catastrophic, and it doesn't hurt to know your airline's track record before climbing on board.
So let's start with the good news. Australia's Qantas has never had a fatality and is considered the safest airline to fly according to AirlineRatings.com. Other airlines on their top twenty list of safest airlines include (alphabetically):
Air New Zealand, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, All Nippon Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways, Emirates, Etihad Airways, EVA Air, Finnair, Hawaiian Airlines, Japan Airlines, KLM, Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airline System, Singapore Airlines, Swiss, United Airlines, and Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia.
Now for the bad news. There are 38 airlines that got a rating of 3 or lower (with 7 being the highest, 1 being the lowest). That means 38 airlines that are wobbly when it comes to safety standards. The 10 airlines with a rating of only 1 include (alphabetically):
Batik Air, Citilink, KalStar Aviataion, Lion Air, Nepal Airlines, Sriwijaya Air and Nam Air, Tara Air, TransNusa, Wings Air and Xpress Air.
Click here for the rest of the airlines that landed at the bottom of the list.
