Except that being realistic, there's no way for an average member of the public to determine whether an airline - particularly a small one - is operating reasonably safely or not.
Ah! - well, in this perfect free market world, if you felt you
needed nannying you could buy that service in, ie hire a consultant to help you decide (eg, buy an airline safety report from Which?).
You might then ask how to avoid the cowboys and sharks amongst the consultants ... but this would only be a mirror of how financial services work in the UK, where you hire an IFA to warn you about which are the crooked banks, but you don't have any way to spot crooked IRAs.