Qantas Group Sweeps the 2024 Airline Rating Safety Awards

The Qantas Group has swept the low-cost and full-service airline categories in AirlineRatings.com’s annual World’s Safest Airlines for 2024.

When determining its rating, AirlineRatings.com takes an extensive range of factors into account, such as serious incidents, recent fatal accidents, audits from aviation’s governing and industry bodies, profitability, industry-leading safety initiatives, expert pilot training assessment and fleet age.

AirlineRatings.com Editor-in-Chief Geoffrey Thomas said that the Qantas Group had received a lot of negative press in Australia over flight delays and cancellations. Still, he said that “the issues that impacted the airline group and its competitors were global and not confined to Australia.”

“The global airline industry was battered during COVID, and it is taking several years to recover with staff shortages, COVID illness and spare parts shortages playing havoc with airlines,” Mr Thomas said.

“Over 46 million airlines and tourism staff lost their jobs during COVID, and the airline industry lost $300 billion. For some reason, some elements in the lay media have chosen to ignore the global issues impacting airlines and relentlessly attack Qantas and Jetstar.”

Mr Thomas said, “What is not appreciated is that Qantas is the world’s most experienced airline with an extraordinary record of firsts in the operational and safety area.

Based on a study written by Mr Thomas, which detailed 25 industry firsts or seconds that Qantas could claim, this was proven to the British Advertising Standards Association (ASA) in 2008.

The Qantas Group has a record number of aircraft on order or with purchase rights, as follows:

• 290 Airbus A320s, Airbus A321XLRs and A220s.
• 24 Airbus A350-1000s plus unspecified purchase rights.
• 4 Boeing 787-9s
• 8 Boeing 787-10s plus unspecified purchase rights.

These aircraft are being delivered at the rate of one every three weeks and will replace the Boeing 737s, 717s and Airbus A330s as well as earlier models of the A320.

The Top Twenty Safest Airlines in the ranking are:

1. Air New Zealand
2. Qantas
3. Virgin Australia
4. Etihad Airways
5. Qatar Airways
6. Emirates
7. All Nippon Airways
8. Finnair
9. Cathay Pacific Airways
10. Alaska Airlines
11. SAS
12. Korean Air
13. Singapore Airlines
14. EVA Air
15. British Airways
16. Turkish Airlines
17. TAP Air Portugal
18. Lufthansa/Swiss Group
19. KLM
20. Japan Airlines
21. Hawaiian Airlines
22. American Airlines
23. Air France
24. Air Canada Group
25. United Airlines.