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Old 16th June 2003 | 16:50
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Pax Vobiscum
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From: Location, Location
Safety as criterion for airline choice

nooluv, while I'm not knocking TAP's safety - they have not got the best record even in Europe. Both Aer Lingus and Finnair are fatality free since 1970 and they both have significantly more flights than TAP (source AirSafe.com).

As a (lapsed) actuary, I can tell you that it's difficult to produce a meaningful comparison of airline safety statistics. Because fatalities are (thankfully) an extremely rare event, you have to go back a long way to achieve anything more than a statement of who has had the most recent/worst accident (Swiss make a poor showing on AirSafe's league table, but I wouldn't claim this makes them 'unsafe'). On the other hand, who cares which was the 'safest' airline in 1970? Most will have radically changed their fleet, route structure and personnel since then.

The only thing the above league table tells us with any degree of confidence is that Turkish have a substantially worse record than any other major 'European' carrier - but then they operate many flights in a different environment where (I guess) safety and ATC standards are not as rigorous as Western Europe. And in many cases the only alternative to a THY flight may be on a carrier with a worse record still!
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