Cathay on top of safety ranking

[readywhenreaching]

its the week of reviews and

in the latest safety listing from germany´s JACDEC of the 60 largest airlines,
its Cathay who´s the frontrunner with no total loss or fatal accident since 42 years and minimal serious incidents in 2014..
to me CX deserves this years gold medal of safety for an excellent job.
2nd is EK and EVA 3rd.
Its Malaysia Airlines on the other side who dropped down (quite mildly I think) from 34rd to 57th place..

Top12List (http://www.t-online.de/reisen/flugreisen/id_72384740/jacdec-ranking-die-sichersten-airlines-der-welt.html)
Jacdec.de (http://www.jacdec.de)

[cxorcist]

I wonder where we rank on the Haddon Cave scale???

[Lowkoon]

Depends which company does the survey, and where advertising dollars are best spent... QF think they have the title.

What are the world's safest airlines? - CNN.com (http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/06/intl_travel/world-safest-airlines/)

Now that QF "still call Dubai home", CX might be in with a chance at taking the top spot next year! How exciting! You could certainly do with some more banners to make Hello Kitty City Pretty!

I wonder how many different airlines have "Best Airline in the World" banners up at any one time during the year? A real competition worthy of note would be one voted by airline staff worldwide. Now that would be credible!

[asianeagle]

I wonder where we rank on the Haddon Cave scale???

Well according to Anna, we have sorted it all now with the removal of A days.
After all, thats all there was right??
:ugh:

[geh065]

Safety isn't simply whether an airline has many incidents or not. There is most definitely a luck factor involved.

These studies need to delve deeper into LOSA-type assessments of threat and error management to have any meaning.

[Midnight Oil]

Well, if we are considering LOSA audits, which Hong Kong airline recently had the best report ever seen in the history of LOSA (over 80 airlines audited) while operating within one of the highest threat environments ever audited by LOSA?

Hint: It is not Cathay pacific! :p

[Shep69]

All I know is if my ass gets there in one piece it's likely all the others will too. And it's not too hard to always do the right thing to make this happen; regardless of whom it might disappoint.

Hasn't failed me yet....and is worth more than all the LOSAs and Haddon-Caves in the world.

[Dan Winterland]

The JACDEC rating is just accidents against RPKs and is pretty meaningless. Finnair came second in 2012 just as a report into their attempt to take off from taxiway A at HKG was released, mentioning they had some serious issues with their procedures.

[missingblade]

I just love how some go on about the massive high threat environment 'we' operate in here in Asia.
Seriously? Flying a fairly new very well maintained jet onto big runways mostly equipped wit ILS is high threat? Oh - its the atc , its mainland and indonesian atc you say...

Whatever.

Try flying a 320 around Indonesia or the Phillipines regionally onto 6000ft runways with no ILS etc etc. What CX and KA do is not hight threat. Its the easiest flying there is with the most support any pilot has ever had in the history of aviation. Thats why youre safest. And obviously your airlines can afford to hire and train good people. Not trying to take that away from you - just commenting on the environment you operate in.

Try operating in South America and Africa, with massive terrain, way more serious wx and much older less maintained airplanes, non existent navaids and atc who are actually really clueless and radarless. Then come tell me about high threat again!!

[Gnadenburg]

Excellent points.

Having been about the place, I do think the KA operation can be a higher threat but the stressor is the inexperience in the RHS when coupled with peculiarities of the operation- namely ATC and SOPS tailored for long haul and not representing an airline that's a training operation.

[ACMS]

I agree with the above regarding KA and their operational threats but don't forget the threat in CX is---

1/ recency of landings for most LH crew and based crew
2/ recency of operating in and around Airfields in China/India ( and others ) for based crew.

KA are "specialists" in and around China, CX crews on the whole are not as current.

There's a threat for you.

[Bob Hawke]

ACMS, great observation - correct.

[Lowkoon]

But they are safer! Jacdec says!

[JammedStab]

I just love how some go on about the massive high threat environment 'we' operate in here in Asia.
Seriously? Flying a fairly new very well maintained jet onto big runways mostly equipped wit ILS is high threat? Oh - its the atc , its mainland and indonesian atc you say...

Whatever.

Try flying a 320 around Indonesia or the Phillipines regionally onto 6000ft runways with no ILS etc etc. What CX and KA do is not hight threat. Its the easiest flying there is with the most support any pilot has ever had in the history of aviation. Thats why youre safest. And obviously your airlines can afford to hire and train good people. Not trying to take that away from you - just commenting on the environment you operate in.

Try operating in South America and Africa, with massive terrain, way more serious wx and much older less maintained airplanes, non existent navaids and atc who are actually really clueless and radarless. Then come tell me about high threat again!!

If I remember correctly, CX spent many years operating out of Kai Tak. Several other carriers with just a few flights in there wrote off airframes. Of all the videos showing unstable landings there, none are CX aircraft. Plus in the airframe loss avoidance arena for 2014, CX was one of a few airlines paying extra gas to avoid the Ukraine. That is the sign of a safety culture being more than lip service.

[wheels up]

You're only the safest until you have an accident.

[Lowkoon]

Missing Blade, it wasnt KA that made that claim, it was the LOSA guys, but we take your point, different regions pose different threats.

[ANCPER]

The GT rating isn't worth the paper it's written on. Bangkok should have written off QF for yrs to come. I'd like to know what statistical analysis was used to come out with that result.

When AA started op again to SYD after 10 yrs away they were questioned by the media about their accident record (Chicago DC10). I guess the AA guy was expecting this as he had the stats to hand. In that 10 yrs it would take all of Australia's airline industry 50 yrs of accident free flying at the then rate to equal what AA had flown in that 10yrs.

On joining CX the Corp. Safety Dept said the US was aiming to reduce (by memory) the hull loss rate to 0.6/million dep, he said to put that into context it would take CX 50 yrs accident free to achieve that.

Having "safest airline" ratings jumping around willy nilly on a yearly basis unless a serious incident/accident has occurred is bs.

Anyone paying heed to anything that Airline ratings.com has to say doesn't know much and must be blind to the conflict of self-interest that is obvious to anyone in the industry in Australia.

Most of these ratings are equivalent to "Best LC" ....."Best Business"......"Best Economy"......Airline etc. CRAP

[Yonosoy Marinero]

Airline safety 'rankings' are always good to attract the casual reader, and not much else.

The truth is, without a deep study of the company's safety training and operational culture, they're pretty much useless.

Saying an airline is safe because it hasn't had an accident in a while is like saying someone has a healthy lifestyle because they don't have cancer. There is no direct link between the two.

Conversely, the more cynical amongst the statistical mathematician crowd would tell you that the longer since your last accident, the higher the chances the next one will happen soon...

[readywhenreaching]

The JACDEC rating is just accidents against RPKs and is pretty meaningless.
not true. there were eight different criteria (http://www.jacdec.de/about-safety-ranking/) of safety measuring

[geh065]

Quote:
The JACDEC rating is just accidents against RPKs and is pretty meaningless.


not true. there were eight different criteria of safety measuring

Yes but basically 8 different ways of saying the same thing.

[Lowkoon]

ANCPER, you are right, Bangkok incident did effect Qantas for years, it happened in 1999.

[Dan Winterland]

http://www.jacdec.de/WP/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/IMG_Safety-Index_small1.jpg



Quote:
The JACDEC rating is just accidents against RPKs and is pretty meaningless.


not true. there were eight different criteria of safety measuring
Yes but basically 8 different ways of saying the same thing.

Pretty much. IOSA membership? That's mandatory for IATA operators. What about the results!

[ANCPER]

Lowkoon,

Well, compared to the sectors the average US airline would do I doubt 14 yrs would quite make it up.

[McNugget]

In the US, the airlines had 3 hull losses and a fair few serious incidents in 2013.

US Airways @ PHL
Southwest @LGA
UPS @ BHX

Mercifully with only the loss of 2 lives. Nothing other than luck prevented that US Airbus from killing all on board.

Let's not get carried away. US Training is as poor as any in the developed world. By the time guys get to the Majors, however, they do have experience. Apparently that doesn't always count for a great deal.

[ANCPER]

The fact that US airlines had 3 hull loses is irrelevant. It's the loses per million departures or whatever the departure yardstick is. The US airline industry would leave most countries for dust when it comes to the number of sectors as do most domestic carriers compared to LH, 6 sectors per a/c per day to a LH of maybe 2/3.

[McNugget]

I'm not disputing that. It's an apples to oranges comparison.

Another way of looking at it, equally factually, is that US airlines have had a large number of hull losses in the last 30 years. Many other airlines haven't had one.

[ANCPER]

I disagree and I think you're missing the point; that some airlines have had no accidents is hardly relevant. If you have some 10 a/c company that takes 60 yrs to fly what another airline with 300 a/c will do in 5, the fact that first airline may have operated 20 yrs without incident means zilch.

If you mean comparing LH to SH is apples and oranges, again, I'd disagree. The primary metric is the loses per departure yardstick. The only difference will be it'll appear to the casual observer that LH is safer, which statistically may not be the case.

[McNugget]

I may have worded it poorly, but I do agree with your last comment.

The point I so poorly tried to make, is that there isn't any statistically accurate way to compare the last 30 years at CX, or QF to United. One can argue bogus statistical comparisons, but without the requisite data (ie one airline with an insufficient number of departures for comparison), it's not valid.

Based on this, I see no reason to claim the US airlines are safer than QF/CX, just because they have more departures to their name...

[BillytheKid]

McNugget-

Maybe you should tell the EU about your conclusion, since they seem to think it IS possible to compare safety records.

[Dan Winterland]

that some airlines have had no accidents is hardly relevant.

After the Air Asia crash, some journalists were saying that Air Asia was one of the safest airlines in the world because they had never crashed before. But anyone who operates around this part of the world knows that they have a bit of a history of runway excursions. And to prove the point, they did it a few days later!

[ANCPER]

I disagree, I'd have thought that data would be readily available. If not and your US airline of choice loses one today the departures for your comparable airline as of today would be readily known and you'd have a good idea of how many yrs (decades) it would take to fly a similar number i.e. how many yrs of accident free ops to equal.

[McNugget]

Never mind.

It doesn't matter whether you agree with me, but the fact remains that given the timeframes covered, question, technical and safety related advances, airlines of vastly different sample sizes, weighted mains, etc., statistics can be used to argue that CX, for example, is the safest around, and vice versa.

If that's too much of a stretch to understand, then so be it.

[ANCPER]

"If that's too much of a stretch to understand, then so be it."

Now don't be too harsh on yourself. :sad:

[wheels up]

Conversely, the more cynical amongst the statistical mathematician crowd would tell you that the longer since your last accident, the higher the chances the next one will happen soon...

Statistics doesn't work like that: It doesn't how many consecutive heads you get flipping a coin, the chance of the next flip being heads is still 50/50.

[Sunamer]

the chance of the next flip being heads is still 50/50.

Except that, it is only for the case when there is nothing affecting that outcome - not the case in aviation or any other human activity environment.

In other words, shifted weight in a coin (slightly less of safety culture) will be giving out higher values that indicates more than 50% chance of crashing... Every time. :\