Singapore Airlines

Is Singapore Airlines safe?

Yes, and few airlines have stronger oversight behind them. The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) scored 99.7% in its 2022 ICAO audit, the highest result any state had achieved, and the airline's fleet averages 8.4 years. We score it 85. It would be in the 90s without a single event: one passenger died on flight SQ321 in May 2024.

What happened on SQ321?

On 21 May 2024, a Boeing 777-300ER flying from London to Singapore met a fast-growing thunderstorm over south-west Myanmar. In under a second, vertical acceleration swung by almost 3 g. Unbelted passengers and crew hit the ceiling. A 73-year-old British passenger died, and the aircraft diverted to Bangkok, where more than 100 people were taken to hospital.

Singapore's Transport Safety Investigation Bureau (TSIB) published its final report on 19 May 2026. It found that this was not classic clear-air turbulence but the updraft and downdraft of a storm cloud the crew had not seen. Whether the weather radar was faulty is still open: maintenance records showed it had failed to display weather on earlier flights, and TSIB said a malfunction "cannot be ruled out" even though the maker's tests found no fault. Its recommendations ask for better radar troubleshooting and for recording what pilots see on their displays.

We count SQ321 as a fatal accident, as the Aviation Safety Network does. With one death among 229 people on board, it is a small event in risk terms. It still costs points, because it is the type of event a strong safety system should catch.

The older record

The airline's only fatal crash happened on 31 October 2000. In a typhoon at Taipei, the crew of SQ006, a Boeing 747-400, lined up on a runway closed for works and hit construction equipment during take-off. 83 of the 179 people on board died. Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council blamed the crew's loss of situational awareness and also pointed to weak runway markings and lighting at the airport.

SilkAir, the regional subsidiary SIA merged into the main airline in 2021, lost a Boeing 737 over Indonesia on 19 December 1997 with all 104 people on board. Indonesian investigators could not determine the cause; the US NTSB concluded that the captain had most likely crashed the aircraft on purpose. That event is nearly 30 years old and outside our 20-year window.

The only aircraft written offHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary since 2000 never flew that day. On 29 November 2017, a Boeing 777-200ER was being towed at Changi when the tow truck caught fire, and the damage was too costly to repair. No passengers were on board.

Several recent incidents are worth knowing. In October 2022, a 777-300ER diverted from Singapore to Batam in a thunderstorm, missed three approaches and landed with fuel "significantly below" the final reserve, according to the TSIB report. In May 2022, a Boeing 737-800 inherited from SilkAir struck its tail on take-off from Kathmandu and diverted to Kolkata. In July 2025, a 787-10 landing at Tokyo Narita ran off the end of the runway at about 15 knots and stopped on the paved safety area, and in January 2026 an A350 scraped its tail on a low go-around at Changi (AeroInside). No one was injured in any of these events.

A young fleet

At 27 September 2026, Singapore Airlines had 153 passenger aircraft with an average age of 8.4 years, by MainlyMiles' count. Most of them are modern types:

Type	In service
Airbus A350-900 (incl. 7 ULR)	65
Boeing 787-10	28
Boeing 737 MAX 8	26
Boeing 777-300ER	22
Airbus A380	12

The 777-300ERs, at about 16 years on average, are the oldest group and will be replaced by Boeing 777-9s once Boeing delivers them. The 737 MAX entered the fleet after SIA absorbed its regional arm SilkAir in 2021. Singapore Airlines flies the MAX on short regional routes, and has had no incident with it of the kind that grounded the type in 2019.

Who should be careful

Turbulence is the main risk on this airline, as on most good airlines. Two practical steps:

• Keep your seat belt fastened whenever you are seated, including while you sleep. Since SQ321, Singapore Airlines stops hot meal service and asks crew to sit down when the seat belt sign is on. That only protects passengers who are buckled.
• Strap in infants and small children properly. Use the bassinet only when the sign is off, and hold the child on your lap with the infant belt when it comes on.

How we scored it

Oversight (96) is above Lufthansa's (93) and Qantas's (92), and the fleet (92) is close to Starlux's (95). The accident record (79) is the main drag, because SQ321 is a fatal accident in the last 15 years under our rubric. Compare Qantas, which scores higher because it has had no death at all since 1951, and Emirates.