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-   -   Top Ten safest airlines in the world (https://www.pprune.org/australia-new-zealand-pacific/504846-top-ten-safest-airlines-world.html)

neville_nobody 13th Jan 2013 21:30


Lets talk probability not luck. You make your luck. More and better training less chance of a disaster.
True to a point. However there are some things that are just 'luck'.

For example QF had a complete electrical failure which just so happened in daylight on climb so they had enough time to fly back on the battery. If that happened in the middle of the night in the Pacific it could have been very different. QF 32 had 3 captains on the aircraft...... What are the odds of that?

The Emirates incident in MEL came within about 20 feet of crashing. What's 20' in an aircraft that big? If max thrust was put on 1 second later it would have been a fireball.

So yeah you make you're own luck to a point but then there is just pure luck/fate/destiny or whatever else you want to call it.

Tableview 13th Jan 2013 21:52


Air travel has never been safer. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), an average passenger travelling on Western-built jetliners would have to take no fewer than 5.3m flights before being involved in an accident. To put that in perspective, even the most frequent of fliers is unlikely ever to rack up more than 20,000 flights over the course of a lifetime. The accident rate for the airline industry as a whole is now so low that someone taking a flight a day could theoretically expect 14,000 years of trouble-free flying.
Air safety: Difference Engine: Up, up and away | The Economist

AEROMEDIC 14th Jan 2013 04:48

Tableview,

I'm sure that those in the industry and close to aircrew and engineering will laugh at this piece of journalism.


Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported that, for the first time since the Flight Safety Foundation, a lobby group based in Alexandria, Virginia, started collecting figures on aviation safety, there were more accidents around the world involving corporate jets than passenger planes. That is something for busy executives to ponder as they climb aboard the company Gulfstream. It is also something air-safety administrations need to pay a good deal more attention to.

That aside, can the huge strides made in aviation safety over the past decade continue? Modern passenger jets are stuffed with aids that make them nigh impossible to crash. Even so, there are dark mutterings about the increasing use of carbon fibre in their construction—to save weight and reduce fuel consumption. Some experts fear such composite materials may hold unpleasant surprises—in much the way that unpredicted failures caused by metal fatigue destroyed the reputation of the de Havilland Comet, the first passenger jet to go into production, in the 1950s.

Others express concern that the cockpit automation designed to make aircraft safer may overwhelm pilots with its complexity and undiagnosed bugs. But whatever direction future safety measures take, there is now no shortage of data about accidents. As tools for analysing big data improve, airline safety is likely to evolve from being merely a reaction to past mistakes to becoming a way of predicting and preventing future ones.

It's all a matter of risk. The full article describes the comparison of cars, trains, buses etc. and acknowledges issues with safety in "some " countries, and so points out that there are some things that affect how safe things REALLY are.

The lack of homework in this article is shown when there is no mention of safety concerns from within the airline staff.
No quotes from pilots or engineers.

As to the evolution of aircraft safety, it's in the hands of airline employees to try to maintain what we have now let alone the future.
With the current crop of managers and board of companies like Qantas (Borhetti excepted), it's akin to swimming against the tide.

Tableview 14th Jan 2013 06:47

AEROMEDIC: Agreed, and I posted the article without comment. There is at least one airline that I can think of which operates a huge number of flights, has perfect safety record, and yet I would not set foot on it because of my concerns over its potential for an accident.

Pedota 14th Jan 2013 21:45

World's safest airline? Really?
 
Fairfax's Clive Dorman has written this in response to the Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Centre's 'safety index' - my bold/italic.



World's safest airline? Really?
Clive Dorman - The Age 15th January 2013


As a young teenager, I squibbed the chance to take an aerobatic flight in a Tiger Moth; no way was I going to join family friends doing loop-de-loop in a crop-duster.

I watched from the ground as they flew over our farm. I was happy to be a land-lubber. It seemed prudent since there was a major aviation disaster every other month back then and it took years into my 20s before I ceased to be a white-knuckle flyer.

In fact, in among all the terrorist bombings around the world, I reckon the scariest time to be an avid traveller was the 1980s, the decade following airline deregulation in the US, when one of the world’s most advanced Western countries struggled to allow new companies the freedom to serve the aviation consumer market, on one hand, and regulate it safely, on the other.

There was one disaster after another in the US and recurring horror stories, like the time an airliner landed on a highway because it had run out of fuel.

It wasn’t until the 1990s that the US and the world started to get their act together and become serious about making commercial flying safe enough that fear of it was simply an irrational neurosis that could be overcome.

Well, it has taken more than two decades since the wild, pioneering days of the jet age; we haven’t reached nirvana, but, to use the cliche, you can see it from here.

According to the aviation experts, not only was 2012 the safest year on record for the amount of travelling that was undertaken, the leap in the statistical safety of flying was so great that it’s unlikely it will be repeated this year.

According to Flightglobal.com’s safety analyst David Learmount, last year’s accident rate of one per 2.3 million flights is 65 per cent better than 2011’s one per 1.4 million flights.

The International Air Transport Association’s senior vice-president of safety, operations and infrastructure, Gűnther Matschnigg, put it another way. “If you were to take a flight every day, odds are, you would fly 14,000 years without being in an accident,” he said.

Not a single IATA member – that is, not one reputable airline – had a “hull-loss” accident last year in which an airliner was written off. To emphasise how important it is to stay on the beaten track and keep away from obscure airlines, here’s the list of last year’s deadliest accidents:

April 2: UTair Flight 120, an ATR-72, crashes shortly after take-off from Tyumen, Russia, killing 31 of the 43 passengers and crew on board.

April 20: Bhoja Air Flight 213, a Boeing 737, crashes near Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in bad weather, killing all of the 127 passengers and crew on board.

May 9: a Sukhoi Superjet 100 on a demonstration tour of Indonesia crashes into Mount Salak, near Jakarta, killing all 45 passengers and crew on board.

June 3: Dana Air Flight 992, a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 carrying 146 passengers and 7 crew members crashes in a suburb of Lagos, Nigeria, on approach to the airport, killing all on board and an estimated 6 more people on the ground.

However, because the calendar year statistics are finalised during the the Christmas-New Year silly season, it’s also possible that you have read ludicrous stories in the Australian media about a couple of German creators of lists claiming that Finnair – a fine European carrier, no doubt – is “the safest airline in the world”.

The pair, operating under the name of the Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Centre, have little credibility in the aviation industry and not a single word of their findings was reported by reputable US and European aviation media such as Flightglobal.com and Air Transport World.

But, in the week after New Year, when specialist aviation reporters were mostly on holiday leave, JACDEC showed considerable skill in public relations in having its report published in Australia.

There was curiosity about the report in Australia because it rated Qantas lowly, but the airline was rightly indignant. "This is not a reputable index recognised by the aviation industry or safety experts," a Qantas spokeswoman told Fairfax.

In fact, the giveaway for me was in the organisation’s amateurish website, complete with black-and-white pictures of the founders and a cavalcade of literal errors: it looks like it was thrown together by junior secondary students as a project.

See the original article at World's safest airline | Plane crashes in 2012 | Travellers' Check

What The 14th Jan 2013 23:29

Dear Clive Dorman,

There is only one credible aviation journalist in Australia, Ben Sandilands. The rest of you are just PR mouthpieces for the airlines and show little journalistic integrity through your lack of research and inability to question the bull**** that is spun to and through you.

The fact that your underlings (who watch the shop whilst you enjoy your airline sponsored vacations) are so eager to print rubbish press releases as credible fact, is an indication that they are learning their trade well.

Lamenting poor journalistic skills whilst being part of the problem is a bit rich. In my opinion, journalism in this country is nearly dead. Reporting, however, is a growth industry fuelled by KPI focused editors, lazy practitioners and an Internet driven hunger for content.

My opinion,

What The

Pundit 14th Jan 2013 23:33

There is little doubt that aviation safety has improved significantly over the past twenty years. Rather than debate the merits, validity etc., of this safety list, perhaps we should reflect on where we see the safety standard today vv say 10 years ago, 20 years ago.

Would you consider Qantas to be safe as it was 20 years ago?

You may recall in the 80's Boeing did a study of airlines that appeared to be safer. A key finding was solid SOPs and their application.

Are the basics still in place, standardisation, training and sound maintenance practices?

If the answer is yes, then has the rest of the world learnt the lesson?

If no, then is the slip in the ratings justified and what are we going to do about it?

LeadSled 15th Jan 2013 00:19


--- in much the way that unpredicted failures caused by metal fatigue destroyed the reputation of the de Havilland Comet, the first passenger jet to go into production, in the 1950s.
Aeromedic,
Not quite that simple, if your read the official report, only released many years after the pressurization accidents, which were not the only reason early Comets were lost.
There was nothing new about fatigue that DeHavilland "pioneered", Boeing had already had problems with its original pressurized hull, but such experience was discounted across the Atlantic.
It is all in the final inspectors report.
That is why the whole fuselage structure of a Comet 4 is so different to a 1 or 2, stripped out the 4 structure looks just like Douglas or (after the -337) Boeing structure --- and no square windows.
Tootle pip!!

AEROMEDIC 15th Jan 2013 01:46

Ledsled,

Yes, you're right about the Comet. I unintentionally left that part in when I copied the paragraph to make my point about shonky journalism.

Square windows just don't work in pressurized fuselages.

ozbiggles 15th Jan 2013 09:21

You can argue about who made it into the top ten until the next list comes out.
I don't think there is any argument about who didn't.
There was a time when Qantas and Rolls Royce were seen as the posters boys for safety.
Those days are long gone.

Stiff Under Carriage 15th Jan 2013 10:31


Air travel has never been safer. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), an average passenger travelling on Western-built jetliners would have to take no fewer than 5.3m flights before being involved in an accident. To put that in perspective, even the most frequent of fliers is unlikely ever to rack up more than 20,000 flights over the course of a lifetime. The accident rate for the airline industry as a whole is now so low that someone taking a flight a day could theoretically expect 14,000 years of trouble-free flying.
If only insurance companies thought the same, re life and income etc!

coaldemon 15th Jan 2013 11:19

Isn't that what LOSA is about?

Capt Kremin 15th Jan 2013 23:51

Ozbiggles, two nobodies from Hamburg publishing a list with no supporting documentation as to how the list was compiled should be given the appropriate level of regard.

As far as Qantas goes, the QF of the Rain Man era was some 25-30 aircraft operating exclusively long haul operations. By the standards of today, it was a small boutique airline which suffered it share of close calls, incidents and accidents. It never lost a passenger or hull in the jet age, which generated the famous line in the movie, but professionals in any airline know that any airlines reputation or safety record is one roll of the dice away from being shattered at any time.

Safety in an airline comes from its culture and part of that culture is recognisation by all of the truth of that last sentence. Can we stop the willy waving and just get on with the job?

GuilhasXXI 16th Jan 2013 00:40

Being a regular passenger on TAP Portugal I can assure everybody that it well deserves it´s position on that top 10 :D

ZFT 16th Jan 2013 00:44

As a regular passenger - how can you tell?

GuilhasXXI 16th Jan 2013 00:52

I happen to know the kind of training TAP pilots get, and I can assure you there aren´t many like it ;) Being a frequent passenger has lead me many times to the cockpit and a few things more that I guess If I told you, would be disrespectufull towars the people who provided me with such information.;)

Anti Skid On 16th Jan 2013 02:14


For Air NZ to be number two, they must have disregarded the A320 that went in on a test flight.
You mean the airframe that was leased and registered to a German operator and was being flown by their crew before being handed back to Air NZ; yes maybe they should include that in the tats to drop them a few places! Just because it had been repainted in Air NZ livery doesn't mean it was their accident.

Capt Kremin 16th Jan 2013 03:13

TAP? You mean these guys?

TAP Airbus A310 Low Pass Turn - Portugal Airshow 2007, Evora (Uncut HD Version) - YouTube

ZFT 16th Jan 2013 04:27


Being a frequent passenger has lead me many times to the cockpit
Umm..................

aveng 16th Jan 2013 04:33

re. TAP flyby,

Rad alt - ops chkd normal.:ok:


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