Smartwings

Is Smartwings safe?

Yes, but its recent incident record is weaker than at most EU airlines. Smartwings has never had a fatal accident or 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 an aircraft, it is overseen by the Czech Civil Aviation Authority under EU rules, and it passed the IATA safety audit (IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary). We score it 82, just below LOT Polish Airlines and well below Wizz Air.

The points it loses come from the last few years. Czech investigators, the UZPLN, and the Czech CAA have found crews breaking procedures in several cases: flying into cloud near terrain, approaching on a wrong altimeter setting, and not reporting damage to the aircraft. Nobody was hurt in any of them.

Smartwings and Czech Airlines

Smartwings started as Travel Service, a charter airline, and that past still shows in its ICAO code, TVS. It has long shared owners with Czech Airlines (CSA), which entered insolvency in March 2021 and is now the group's holding company. CSA stopped flying under its own OK code and certificate in October 2024; the CSA brand lives on, on four Airbus A220s and other Prague flights, but every one of those flights is now a Smartwings flight and counts here. On 1 October 2026 Turkey's Pegasus Airlines completed its purchase of the whole group.

Czech Airlines' own history before 2024 belongs to a separate airline with its own certificate, so we describe it but do not count it. Its last fatal crashes were in the 1970s: an Il-62 near Damascus in 1975 (126 dead) and an Il-18 near Bratislava in 1976 (76 dead). In 2012 an ATR 42 burned out during maintenance in a Prague hangar, with no one on board.

Accidents: the Azores and Budapest

Neither of Smartwings' two accidents killed anyone, but both had causes inside the airline.

On 22 February 2014 a Boeing 737-800 flying Prague to Montego Bay stopped to refuel at Lajes in the Azores in gusts of up to 50 knots and severe turbulence. It touched down hard at 3.5 g, bounced, and the captain pushed the nose down onto the runway. Portugal's investigators found that company procedures required a go-around, and that the push forward caused the damage to the nose gear bay. The aircraft was repaired.

On 23 March 2018, during pushback at Budapest for an Israir flight to Tel Aviv, smoke from the tug got into the cabin. Cabin crew at the back opened the exits while the engines were still running; the slides were unstable in the jet blast for about two and a half minutes, and one passenger fell and suffered a serious head injury. Hungary's investigators blamed poor communication between the cabin crew in the rear galley and the rest of the crew.

The serious incidents since 2019

These are the cases that set the incidents score:

• Aegean Sea, August 2019. A 737-800's left engine shut down at 36,000 feet and would not relight. With fuel to spare, the crew flew on for 2 hours 20 minutes to Prague rather than land at a nearby airport.
• Skyros, June 2023. A 737-700 entered cloud at about 1,500 feet near rising terrain and got a "pull up" warning. The Czech CAA said the crew broke operating procedures by flying into cloud; the warning and their quick climb prevented worse.
• Marsa Matruh, July 2025. A 737-8 MAX approached Egypt's Marsa Matruh with the altimeter set 10 hectopascals wrong, after the captain, alone in the cockpit, took the wrong value and nobody caught it. The aircraft flew about 280 feet below the profile in poor visibility until the runway lights showed it low.
• Cagliari and Valencia, May 2025. On an A220, ground staff twice reported door damage, and the captain twice did not record it or tell maintenance before flying on.
• Near Athens, February 2026. At 37,000 feet a 737-800's right engine did not respond when the crew restored thrust after a speed surge; the stick shaker fired briefly during a manual descent.
• Funchal, April 2026. A 737-900's tail touched the runway on take-off after a fast rotation in a gust, and the crew flew on to Prague unaware.

Older Smartwings incidents at Bourgas (2017), Pardubice (2018) and Heraklion (2018) involved aircraft and crews leased in from other airlines, so we describe rather than count them. At Pardubice, a 737 with a Swift Air crew on a wet lease overran the runwayRunway excursionWhen an aircraft leaves the runway surface during take-off or landing, either off the end (an overrun) or off the side (a veer-off).More in the glossary after a distracted approach; Czech investigators list Travel Service as the operator, which is why we name it here.

How old is the Smartwings fleet?

Mixed. On its Czech certificate Smartwings flies 41 aircraft: 19 737-800s and 2 737-900ERs of the older 737 NG generation, 14 737-8 MAXs, 4 A220-300s and 2 A320s (ch-aviation, October 2026). Smaller Smartwings airlines in Poland, Slovakia and Hungary fly four more 737-800s under their own certificates. Smartwings publishes no average age.

Flying Smartwings: what to know

• Check who operates your flight. Smartwings has long wet-leased aircraft in and out, especially in summer. The operator is on the booking or the boarding pass.
• Madeira can be rough. Funchal is one of Europe's hardest airports, with gusty winds off the mountains, and diversions there are common.
• Expect changes on Middle East routes. EASA kept conflict-zone bulletins in force for several Middle East countries through 2026, so flights to the region, such as Salalah in Oman, can change at short notice.

How we scored it

Oversight (90) and the accident record (90) are solid. The fleet (74) is still more than half older 737 NGs. Incidents (62) cost the most: a run of crew-procedure cases since 2023, found by the Czech CAA and the UZPLN.