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SafetyScorer

Ranking

Safest Airlines in the World 2026

The 25 highest-scoring airlines we cover, from carriers on every continent. Each score combines the airline's accident record over the last 20 years with the strength of its regulator, the age and type of its fleet, its serious incidents and the airports it flies to. Open any airline for the data and sources behind its score.

Updated · Scores update with each page

The ranking

  1. Virgin Atlantic

    Virgin Atlantic has never had a fatal accident or lost an aircraft in more than 40 years of flying. Its fleet of 43 widebodies averaged 7.5 years at the end of 2025. The record is built on fewer flights than at big short-haul airlines, and a few in-flight technical failures since 2019 are the main blemishes.

    Score 91, grade A

  2. Scoot

    Scoot, Singapore Airlines' low-cost arm, has never had a fatal accident or lost an aircraft. It is overseen by CAAS, which scored 99.7% in ICAO's 2022 audit, and its 63 jets average under six years. Points go for a 787 that lost a nose wheel in 2023, a tail strike and two turbulence encounters with serious injuries.

    Score 90, grade A

  3. All Nippon Airways (ANA)

    ANA has not had a crash with deaths since 1971, flies one of the largest Boeing 787 fleets in the world and is overseen by a strong regulator. The blemish is recent and on the ground, not in the air, with falsified maintenance records found in 2025.

    Score 89, grade A

  4. easyJet

    easyJet has flown since 1995 without a fatal accident or a written-off aircraft, and now flies about 576,000 flights a year on an all-Airbus fleet. It is not an IATA member, so it relies on UK, Austrian and Swiss oversight rather than IOSA. Its weak spot is a run of take-off performance errors.

    Score 89, grade A

  5. Norwegian

    Norwegian has never had a fatal accident or lost an aircraft. It flies 95 Boeing 737s, averaging 8.5 years, under Norwegian and Swedish certificates within the EASA system. It is not an IATA member, and its recent serious incidents are mostly turbulence and an airprox that injured cabin crew.

    Score 89, grade A

  6. Qantas

    Qantas has one of the cleanest long-term records of any large airline. No passenger or crew member has died in a Qantas accident since 1951, and it has never lost a jet. The catch is an ageing fleet that is only now being replaced.

    Score 89, grade A

  7. Ryanair

    Ryanair has one of the strongest records of any budget airline. No passenger or pilot has died in a Ryanair accident in 41 years and millions of flights. It is not an IATA member, so it relies on EU oversight rather than IOSA, and a July 2026 engine failure is under investigation.

    Score 89, grade A

  8. Air New Zealand

    Air New Zealand has not had a fatal accident on its own flights since the 1979 Erebus disaster, and it has lost no aircraft since. Oversight is strong. Points go for a cluster of serious incidents on its regional turboprops since 2023 and Q300s that average 19 years old.

    Score 88, grade A

  9. Eurowings

    Eurowings has never had a fatal accident caused by its aircraft or operation, and it flies under German and Maltese certificates within EASA. The 2015 Germanwings crash was a deliberate act by the co-pilot, which we describe but do not count. The weak spot is an older A319 and A320 fleet.

    Score 88, grade A

  10. Finnair

    Finnair has not had a fatal accident since a DC-3 crashed at Mariehamn in 1963, and it has not written off an aircraft in the jet age. It flies under EASA rules from Helsinki. The weaker spots are 15 Airbus A319s and A320s averaging about 24 years and a network squeezed between closed Russian airspace and GPS jamming.

    Score 88, grade A

  11. KLM

    KLM has not had a fatal mainline accident since the Tenerife runway collision in 1977, and its regional arm KLM Cityhopper's last was in 1994. It is overseen within the EASA system and is IOSA-registered. Its Boeing 737s are ageing, and a 2024 runway excursion in Norway is still under investigation.

    Score 88, grade A

  12. Porter Airlines

    Porter has flown since 2006 without a fatal accident or a written-off aircraft. Its fast-growing fleet of Embraer E195-E2 jets is among the newest in North America. Two runway events with its Dash 8 turboprops, at Sault Ste. Marie in 2023 and Fredericton in 2024, keep the incidents score lower.

    Score 88, grade A

  13. Virgin Australia

    Virgin Australia has never had a fatal accident or lost an aircraft since it started as Virgin Blue in 2000, and CASA regulates it. It came through administration in 2020 and relisted in 2025. Points go for take-off and approach errors since 2022 and a fleet averaging 11.5 years.

    Score 88, grade A

  14. Vueling

    Vueling, IAG's Barcelona-based low-cost airline, has never had a fatal accident or lost an aircraft. It is overseen by Spain's AESA within the EASA system and is IOSA-registered. Its A320s average about 13 years, and Spanish investigators opened two cases on it in 2026.

    Score 88, grade A

  15. WestJet

    WestJet has never had a fatal accident, and no WestJet or WestJet Encore aircraft appears as a hull loss in the ASN records we use. A 737 landing gear collapse at St. Maarten in 2025 and three hard or tail-strike landings by Encore turboprops at Calgary in 2024 cost it points on incidents.

    Score 88, grade A

  16. Wizz Air

    Wizz Air has carried 500 million passengers without a fatal accident or a lost aircraft, and its Airbus fleet averages 4.5 years. It flies under Hungarian, Maltese and UK certificates and is not an IATA member. Recent serious incidents, including a 2025 tail strike at Prague, keep it below the best.

    Score 88, grade A

  17. Aer Lingus

    Aer Lingus has not had a fatal accident since a Viscount crashed off Tuskar Rock in 1968, and no aircraft has been written off in decades. It is overseen within the EASA system. A 2025 approach upset that it reported two months late, and ageing A320s and A330s, keep it below the top.

    Score 87, grade A

  18. Etihad Airways

    Etihad has never had a fatal accident or lost an aircraft, and it flies a modern widebody fleet under an FAA Category 1 regulator. A few turbulence injuries, a 2020 low-approach incident at Abu Dhabi and the 2026 Iran war keep it below the top tier.

    Score 87, grade A

  19. EVA Air

    EVA Air has flown since 1991 without a fatal accident or a hull loss, one of the cleanest records of any long-haul airline. A 2026 cockpit assault case and a 2025 crew death that exposed sick-leave rules are reminders that culture matters as much as hardware.

    Score 87, grade A

  20. Hawaiian Airlines

    Hawaiian has no fatal accident and no written-off aircraft in our records since it started flying in 1929, and since October 2025 it flies under Alaska Airlines' FAA certificate. Its weak points are 24-year-old Boeing 717s and a 2022 turbulence event the NTSB blamed on the crew's route.

    Score 87, grade A

  21. Jetstar Airways

    Jetstar Airways, the Qantas Group's low-cost airline in Australia and New Zealand, has never had a fatal accident or written off an aircraft. Its fleet is being renewed with A321LRs. Points go for several approaches and go-arounds that investigators found poorly flown, and for IOSA registration we could not confirm.

    Score 87, grade A

  22. Lufthansa

    Lufthansa has not had a fatal accident since a runway overrun in Warsaw in 1993. It is overseen by Germany and EASA and is IOSA-registered. Its fleet is older than most rivals', and German investigators opened two cases on it in 2026.

    Score 87, grade A

  23. Peach Aviation

    Peach, ANA's low-cost airline, has had no fatal accident, no hull loss and no injury accident since it started flying in 2012, under Japan's demanding regulator. It loses points for four serious incidents investigated by the JTSB, two of them caused by its own crews, and a captain who drank before a flight in 2025.

    Score 87, grade A

  24. Qatar Airways

    Qatar Airways has never had a fatal accident and has not lost an aircraft in flight. A 2015 take-off strike at Miami, turbulence injuries and missile attacks on Doha during the 2026 Iran war keep it just below the very top.

    Score 87, grade A

  25. SAS Scandinavian Airlines

    SAS has had no fatal accident since 2001, when another aircraft strayed onto the runway at Milan Linate. Its fleet of 140 aircraft averaged 8.9 years in 2025. The weak spots are three Dash 8 landing-gear failures in 2007 and a 2026 take-off roll on a taxiway at Brussels, stopped at about 100 knots.

    Score 87, grade A

How we rank airlines

Every airline on this list has its own page with five scored factors. The accident record carries the most weight, 40%: fatal accidents and lost aircraft over the last 20 years, measured against how much the airline flies. Regulatory oversight counts for 20%, using the International Civil Aviation Organization's audit of the home country, the US Federal Aviation Administration's rating, the European Union's EU Air Safety ListThe European Commission's list of airlines banned or restricted from flying in EU airspace because they do not meet international safety standards.More in the glossary and the airline's IATA safety audit (IOSAThe 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). Fleet age and type count for 15%, serious incidents for 15%, and the difficulty of the airline's network, its airports, terrain and weather, for 10%.

The order on this page is not chosen by hand. It is the airline scores, sorted from the highest down, so when we update an airline page after a new incident, audit or fleet change, its place here moves too. That is also why we do not quote scores in this text: the list above always shows the current ones.

What the safest airlines have in common

Most of the airlines near the top fly under regulators with very high audit results, such as those in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan and the Gulf states. Most have young fleets, often of a single aircraft family, which keeps training and maintenance simple. And most have flown for decades without a fatal accident, or have made deep changes after one.

A high score is not a promise. Serious accidents are so rare that any airline on this list could have one, and a low-scoring airline will still almost always land safely. The score tells you how an airline's record and its safety system compare with others, not what will happen on one flight. If you want the risk of a single flight, look up your flight number: we also score the aircraft type it uses.

For the factors, weights and thresholds, see how we score airlines.

Questions

Which airline is the safest in the world?

The airline at the top of this list has the highest score we give any carrier right now. The gap between the top ten is small, so treat them as a group of very safe airlines rather than a strict order. Every one of them has gone many years without a fatal accident while flying millions of passengers.

How is this ranking different from AirlineRatings or JACDEC?

Each list weighs things differently. We publish our five factors, their weights and the rubric for each, and every airline page shows the score for each factor with the source behind it. The order here comes straight from those scores, so it changes when we update a page.

Are budget airlines less safe?

Not by default. Several low-cost carriers rank well because they fly young fleets of one aircraft type under strong regulators. Price says little about safety; the regulator, the fleet and the record say much more.

Does one crash make an airline unsafe?

One fatal accident lowers the accident record score for 20 years, but it does not on its own make an airline unsafe to fly. What matters more is what the investigation found and whether the airline and its regulator fixed the causes. Each airline page explains its accidents and what changed.

Why is my airline not on the list?

This list shows only the top 25. The airline may score lower, or we may not cover it yet. Use the search or the full airline list to find it.