Australian carrier Qantas voted the world’s safest airline for third year in a row

Australian airline Qantas has been voted the safest in the world in a new study by AirlinesRatings.com – with Alaska Airlines, Finnair and Virgin Atlantic also making the list.

The organization monitored 407 airlines during 2015, assessing factors such as government audits, operational histories and incident and fatality records; 148 attained the top seven-star rating. Almost 50 had three stars or less.

This is the third year in a row Qantas came out on top.

The study also revealed that the world’s airlines carried a record 3.6 billion passengers on 34 million flights in 2015. Furthermore, according to Aviation-Safety.net data, there were 16 fatal accidents in 2015 leading to 560 fatalities, an improvement on 2014, when there were 21 accidents and 714 fatalities).

Here are the top 20 safest airlines according to the study, in alphabetical order (except for Qantas).

1.    Qantas
2.    Air New Zealand
3.    Alaska Airlines
4.    All Nippon Airlines (ANA)
5.    American Airlines
6.    Cathay Pacific Airways
7.    Emirates
8.    Etihad Airways
9.    EVA Air
10.    Finnair
11.    Hawaiian Airlines
12.    Japan Airlines
13.    KLM
14.    Lufthansa
15.    Scandinavian Airline System (SAS)
16.    Singapore Airlines
17.    Swiss
18.    United Airlines
19.    Virgin Atlantic
20.    Virgin Australia

This year, AirlineRatings.com has also identified the top ten safest low cost airlines, listed below (again, in alphabetical order).

1.    Are Lingus
2.    Flybe
3.    HK Express
4.    Jetblue
5.    Jetstar Australia
6.    Thomas Cook
7.    TUI Fly
8.    Virgin America
9.    Volaris
10.    Westjet

Source: http://www.airlineratings.com/