ATRA Releases List of Worlds 10 Safest Airlines

In first-ever kind of a ranking, as many as six U.S. carriers are placed among the ‘Top 10 Safest Airlines’ in the world. The report was released by the Air Transport Rating Agency (ATRA) yesterday.



European-based Air Transport Rating Agency (ATRA) released its list of the world's 10 safest airlines yesterday. While European and American airlines seldom make it to the top rankings when it comes to top notch customer service, carriers from these regions seem to be much safer as per the ATRA.



As many as six North American airlines made it top the top 10. These airlines are American Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Airlines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines and US Airways. European carriers that made it to the list are Air France - KLM, British Airways and Lufthansa.



No airlines from Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East or Asia are in the top ten lists, with the sole exception of Japan Airlines.



The ATRA is a rating agency based in Geneva, Switzerland that deals with aviation risk assessment and advanced data analyses in the air travel sector.



To conduct first study of its kind, the Air Transport Rating Agency is reported to have examined publicly available information on 15 criteria. This includes total number of travellers and cabin crew workforce; the average age of the carrier's aircraft fleet, frequency of accidents in past ten years, dedicated flight academy pilot-training facilities and dedicated full flight simulators.



Air Transport Rating Agency elucidated that to understand airline safety, one is required to not only look at accident figures, but also give attention to "technical, human, organisational and external" elements.



ATRA believed that the European Union's list was a good beginning as far as airline safety rating is concerned but the agency said that the listing led to a belief that all airlines which do not feature on the 'blacklist' are providing the same level of safety, which the agency believes is surely not the case.



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