You’ll have a very short list of carriers left not on the list, if any.
Human error happens with much greater frequency in aviation than you might believe - I have experienced some absolutely hair-raising moments (watched Lufthansa lose a winglet on landing while the stewardess prayed, had an aerolinias argentinas flight take off with a luggage compartment still open, and a air Bishkek flight where the wheels locked on landing and we ground down the runway at sheremetyevo on hubs), and have been told tales of others by pilots that I wish I hadn’t been told.
The thing is, most of the time, it’s nothing more than some scared passengers and a messed up schedule. “Almost” didn’t happen.
Yeah I know a couple of pilots, one of whom does "flying scum buses" as he calls them to hot places around Europe and have a lot of horror stories. Nothing major: bits of planes falling off, people going bananas, near misses etc.
I generally don't fly these days and haven't actually been in a plane for 20 years (ex wife couldn't fly due to med issue) but I need to get out there and would like to pick the least shitty solution.
Two more to add to the list. Brand new passenger aircraft on final approach to landing and the control tower tells the pilot they've forgotten to lower the landing gears. Worse case outcome, clear good weather condition, passenger aircraft approaches landing and gets it wrong, crash and burn, passengers survive on the ground and some get runover by the fire trucks arriving on scene.
I’ve driven an airport fire appliance and that doesn’t surprise me in the slightest - I could not see a damned thing for 20 meters in front of me on the ground, as the window is a thick glass slit mounted above eye level, as it’s designed to be driven into and withstand a jet fuel fire - you have to stand and drive to see where you’re going - and that was in clear broad daylight.
Some environments foster correction of such errors, learning, experience-sharing, pay well for parts and maintenance, don't overwork their staff. Others not.
The problem with lists of major accidents is they aren't necessarily a predictor of future accidents, and in some cases may be the reverse. An airline suffering a major accident is likely to lead to a significant safety overhaul.
What's needed is a service that tracks near misses or mistakes such as in this post, and their trend over time for each airline. An increase in frequency for a particular airline might well be usefully predictive.
> The problem with lists of major accidents is they aren't necessarily a predictor of future accidents, and in some cases may be the reverse. An airline suffering a major accident is likely to lead to a significant safety overhaul.
This should be a somewhat testable proposition, right? Does time since accident increase or decrease the probability of next accident?
(Practically, plotting the distribution of inter-accident durations and seeing if the tail falls off exponentially, slower, or faster.)
There is no methodology or details or anything. How does number of accidents relate to number of planes operated, or number of flown miles? What constitutes an "accident"? Do terrorist bomb plots count? Do incidents where the airline could not be be blamed count (e.g. MH17)? Is an accident from 30 years ago still counted? Czech Airlines scores quite low, but the last fatal accident was in 1977; so if these older accidents are counted then why is IcelandAir listed with "no accidents" even though they had one in 1978?
And how is "eco-friendly" or "service" measured? Why does AtlasGlobal score quite well on Safety even though it's ranked quite low in here, while SCAT airlines – with the same number of "odds of fatal accident" – does have a very low safety score?
Sorry, but useless website. Actually, worse than useless because it pretends to be informational but it's not as the actual amount of information is minimal beyond "trust me" and even a basic scrutiny of a few minutes shows up all sorts of inconsistencies and oddities.
It's almost as if "how safe is an airline?" is a complex question that requires expertise and analysis instead of a website with a few lines of JavaScript conjured up by some programmer guy...
Yeah I agree this site is not the definitive answer to the question of airline safety with all its nuances. Like you said, in the end it is a work of just one person and it is perhaps more for entertainment value than information content, because you still have to take it with a huge grain of salt if you meant to make any serious decisions based on it.
But it is good enough for an inspiration to start a tongue-in-cheek airline shitlist the person I was replying to mentioned. At least I got a joky vibe from their comment. Perhaps they were super serious in that they were gonna start one right this second?
The safest carriers are those that have just been founded recently, by this logic. Since they have no incident history.
According to this website, Air Asia is supposedly safer than Singapore. And Xiamen Airlines are safer than Cathay? CX and SQ have one of the best safety records, each only suffered a single hull loss, which is very little considering how long they've been operating.
Air Asia is not even a single operation but a bunch of separate airlines using the same brand for marketing purposes. Some of them have much worse safety record than the others (Air Asia Indonesia for example). One would think this also warrants a mention, considering KLM is labeled "Air France-owned" (which is sort of true but much less relevant). Also for consistency shouldn't Transavia then be labeled "Air France-owned" and not "KLM-owned?" Or maybe Air France should be labeled "KLM-owned" to give the more complete story.
In any case, it would be much more useful to know which airlines are government-owned, since this usually breeds regulatory collusion (especially if the regulator and the head of the airline happen to be the same person).
Anyone can put up a list on the Internet but this one is really misleading. If you want a better picture of airline safety comparison (still with many caveats), there's this one:
What airline does not see pilots, crew and maintenance as just another cost point that needs optimization to the max in order to satisfy shareholders and investors?
In the US and plenty of places the airline regulations are strong and followed well. NTSB reports have nothing to do with shareholder value and FAA directives are followed. Not that there are no problems, but flying in the US is very safe.
Boeing 737 MAX disasters says otherwise, especially when after the first crash the decision was made not the ground all others which was clearly in favor of profits over safety.
The accidents may not have been American airlines but it could have easily been.
Southwest's pilots union has been somewhat weak with negotiations if anything. A lot of their pilots are super unhappy about it. The market is strong for pilots right now and they're behind their peers at the Big 3 by quite a bit in a lot of areas.
Not sure how far the information is true but I am told many Middle eastern carriers do not get sufficiently mature pilots & have to make do with junior ones. Or it could be possible that they compensate for some of the luxurious offerings with invisible cutting corners like pilot experience. Either way there seems to be a certain issue which needs addressing.
I remember reading on HN where the pilot failed to timely rotate the plane when it was supposed to take off until it had overshot and apparently flew at 200+ kts after taking off from DBX at low altitude (75 ft) for about a mile, before climbing up & proceeding without incident to IAD [1][2]. Admiral Cloudberg blogged that Emirates 521 incident showed Emirates pilots seemed over-reliant on instrument for landing [3].
I don't know of a single airline not to have had any sort of incident. So you'll have to take the boat to cross the oceans next time you need to visit another contient :)
Are you implying Qatar isn’t a proper airline? Anyone who flies international often would likely rate it at the highest levels currently. My current lowest ranked crap airline is British. God have the Europeans grown lazy.
There's a difference between the onboard service and cabin (and god are BA shit), and the flight safety.
That said BA earned a hell of a black mark when it chose to divert to Heathrow rather than Stansted or even Gatwick when its engine was on fire [1]. Not as much as when Air France decided to divert from Lebanon to Damascus in the middle of a civil war rather than Cyprus because it was cheaper [2]
> That said BA earned a hell of a black mark when it chose to divert to Heathrow rather than Stansted or even Gatwick when its engine was on fire
After declaring an emergency, if they landed at Heathrow, that was at the pilot's discretion or due to limiting factors like runway length at Gatwick and the weight of their plane. The article is light on detail but they circled over Kent as well, so the pilots must have thought it was safe after shutting down the engine.
I'd guess they knew it was safe and it's easier to deal with a plane full of pax at your originating airport than diverting to STN (where there's no BA ops) or LGW (BA have ops here so could have worked).
Honestly I’ll take the incremental odds that I’ll be the unlucky guy in the first ever Qatar plane crash over the absolute dogpile BA calls service now (having just received my missed business class bag after a full week of no communication or updates).
Safety and customer experience are two different things that may not correlate much most of the time. I'll rather have top quality pilots and maintenance than friendliest flight attendants if I have to choose between two.
I prefer a pleasant flight than to fly a shitty airline.
And as a frequent flyer of European airlines for intercontinental flights, the quality of the flight experience pales in contrast with Qatar.
You don't know how good the pilot is until it gets you out of a really bad situation that the AP cannot manage. Most airline pilots do very little actual flying: takeoffs mostly, and depending on how new the plane is and the type of runways they land on, some just use auto-land systems.
You're most likely to find more experienced pilots flying small commercial planes without AP than actual proper airline pilots.
Autoland is not the common landing method unless you're in very poor visibility. Pilots DO use it in good weather or other situations, but that's mostly to keep current on their certifications for its use. For those who are curious, look up Category III (Cat III) or 0/0 approaches. Those are the ones autoland are intended for.
Secondly, amongst pretty much every common definition of experience "small commercial plane" operators are almost always less experienced than airline pilots, at least in the US. The reason for this is simple, to be a commercial pilot you need 250 hours of flight experience. To be an airline pilot you need 1500. Small commercial businesses are commonly where pilots pick up the experience needed to even apply to be an airline pilot.
Other common sources: 1) Flight instructing (also a small commercial gig), 2) The military, 3) Aviation schools and lots of $$$$
> Most airline pilots do very little actual flying: takeoffs mostly, and depending on how new the plane is and the type of runways they land on, some just use auto-land systems.
And that's precisely why I also care about pilot quality before how pleasant the service is. The moment something goes awry with the automated systems you better have a good crew flying your plane than a crew who's much more reliant on instruments and automation.
It's like insurance, I'd rather choose to never have to use it but the moment I need it you bet I'll be very grateful that I preferred a very good coverage than the cheapest option out there.
Agreed on most parts, but at some point you have to start deciding whether the safety tradeoff is worth it. You’re still more likely to die on the car ride to the airport than in the plane, yet we all do it still. And the “quality” of service is not just slightly off, it’s wildly off to the extent it genuinely distresses you even when everything is going right, leave alone the hell British creates if even something goes wrong. Again, until something actually crashes I’ll reserve judgement on whether the slight increase in supposed risk for the middle eastern airlines is even real.
The increased risk people are talking about have been demonstrated in the form of crashed airliners.
The entire rubric of reporting deviations early and often was developed as it was identified as a major cause of crashes in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.
Per this particular incident: It is a big deal the FO screwed up. It's a bigger deal that the screwup was not reported, as it's an indication that the culture of the airline is more concerned with reputation than keeping everyone alive.
