Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) — There is no doubt that the past year was a difficult year for airlines, as the decline in air travel continued throughout 2021, due to the continuing impact of the pandemic.
Even now, two years following COVID-19 first appeared, there are still far fewer travelers and planes in the sky.
The virus continued to dominate conversations regarding aviation safety, bringing some significant changes to the annual list of the world’s safest airlines as ranked by Airline Ratings, an airline safety and product review website.
This year, Air New Zealand ranked first on the annual safety chart, which monitors 385 airlines from around the world, by measuring several factors such as airline accident records, critical accidents, the age of aircraft, as well as protocols concerned with “Covid-19”.
New Zealand’s national airline, Air New Zealand, was awarded first place “due to its excellent accident record, number of cockpit innovations, pilot training and extremely low fleet lifespan”, according to Geoffrey Thomas, editor in chief of the Australian website.
Etihad Airways ranked second, while Qatar Airways came in third, while Singapore Airlines and TAP Portugal ranked fourth and fifth, respectively.
Australian airline Qantas was notably absent among the top five, which was named the world’s safest airline between 2014 and 2017, as well as between 2019 and 2021 (no clear winner identified in 2018).
The Australian carrier ranked seventh this time due to a “slight increase in accidents associated with the age of the fleet”.
In October 2021, a Qantas Airways plane traveling from the Australian city of Perth to Adelaide in Western Australia was diverted due to a fuel imbalance, in an incident classified as a “serious accident”.
“Airlines have struggled over the past two years, when COVID-19 has cut flights, and the airline ratings editors have focused in particular on measures that airlines undertake to retrain pilots before returning to service,” Thomas explained.
“Air New Zealand is an industry leader with extensive retraining,” Thomas noted.
Safety Developments
The airline has also received praise for being a world leader in operational safety improvements over the past four decades.
Its various initiatives include becoming one of the first airlines in the world to experiment with using “Assaia Apron AI” technology to improve take-off times.
“Air New Zealand has excelled in all broad areas of safety, never losing sight of the smallest detail while taking care of its onboard cabin crew who have worked under great pressure,” Thomas told CNN.
On some occasions, AirlineRatings has simply chosen to name its winner, before listing the rest of the major airlines alphabetically, but the site recently chose to rank each of the top 20 airlines in numerical order, revealing some significant moves from year to year.
For example, Emirates Airlines ranked fifth in the 2021 list, but the Emirates airline was included in the 20th place this year, while Southwest Airlines ranked 13th in 2021, but it is not included in the list of the top 20 new companies for the year 2022.
AirlineRatings has also released a list of the world’s safest low-cost airlines in alphabetical order, equally ranked, and the top 10 low-cost airlines are Allegiant Air, EasyJet, Frontier Airlines, and Jetstar Airways And”JetBlue Airways” And”Ryanair”, And”Fitjet lines” And “Volaris”, and “Westjet” and “Wizz Air.
Airline Ratings’ list of the world’s safest airlines for 2022:
- Air New Zealand
- Etihad Airways
- Qatar Airways
- Singapore Airlines
- TAP Portugal
- Scandinavian Airlines
- Qantas Airways
- Alaska Airlines
- EVA Aviation
- Virgin Australia Airlines
- Cathay Pacific Airlines
- Hawaiian Airlines
- American Airlines
- German airline Lufthansa
- where are you
- KLM Royal Dutch
- British Airways
- Delta Airlines
- United Airlines
- Fly Emirates
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