Emirates Airlines crowned as the world’s safest airline (Video)

A new safety rating by the Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Centre, or JACDEC, crowned Emirates Airlines as the world’s safest airline. In a study published in aviation magazine Aero International, Emirates scored 93.61 percent on the Jacdec risk index, ahead of Norwegian Air Shuttle (93.26 percent) and the United Kingdom’s Virgin Atlantic Airways (92.87 percent).

The top three are followed by KLM, Easyjet, Finnair, and Etihad. The only North American airline to crack the top ten was Spirit Airlines, which ranked eighth.

The Jacdec safety rating only considered the 100 largest airlines by passenger volume, so some smaller airlines with excellent safety track records were not examined. It also only took aircraft of more than 5.7 tons of basic and empty operating weight and more than nineteen seats into account.

This year’s assessment not only exceeds the number of airlines evaluated (sixty in 2016 versus 100 in 2017), it is also the most comprehensive study done to date. “We have expanded to a much broader risk assessment of the industry” explained Jacdec-founder Jan Richter, thanks to more data available now than in years prior.

Previously, Jacdec’s ranking had solely been based on a comparison of an airline’s flight volume with serious incidents, such as hull losses or near-crashes. Now, additional risk factors are being integrated into the analysis. This includes variables such as how much an airline uses smaller airports with limited infrastructure, how many of its flights cross large bodies of water and which potentially dangerous climatic events such as hurricanes or snow storms are likely along its routes. The new analysis also takes into account how airlines and the airports they use performed in safety audits by local authorities.

This year’s JACDEC Airline Safety Ranking marks a paradigm shift. It now compares the largest 100 airlines by their key safety parameters, displacing the older list of 60 airlines.  The complete list together with a comprehensive safety analysis of the past year will be available in the February 2018 issue of the German aviation magazine Aero International. (available in German language only).