Aer Lingus named among the world’s safest airlines

Leave the holy water and the medals to St. Christopher at home!

There’s great news for those traveling with Aer Lingus this year, especially if you’re a nervous flyer, as they were named among the world’s safest low-cost airline for the second year in a row.

Established in 2013, AirlineRatings.com is the world’s only safety and product rating website and for the last two years it has placed Irish airline Aer Lingus in the top ten low-cost airlines.

As the site recently reported, unlike many other low-cost carriers, Aer Lingus and the other airlines listed have all passed the stringent International Air Transport Association Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) and they all have a good past record of meeting high safety standards.

The top ten (not placed in any order by the site) includes: Aer Lingus, Flybe, HK Express, Jetblue, Jetstar Australia, Thomas Cook, TUI Fly, Virgin America, Volaris and Westjet.

The site also revealed the safest possible airlines with whom travelers can fly (or at least from the 407 carriers they monitor).

For an amazing third year in a row, Australian airline Qantas has taken the top spot with a remarkable fatality free record in the jet era.

The remaining carriers in the top twenty list (again in no particular order) are: Air New Zealand, Alaska Airlines, All Nippon Airlines, American Airlines, Cathay Pacific Airways, Emirates, Etihad Airways, EVA Air, Finnair, Hawaiian Airlines, Japan Airlines, KLM, Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airline System, Singapore Airlines, Swiss, United Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia.

AirlineRatings.com analyzes information related to audits from aviation’s governing bodies and lead associations, government audits and the airline’s fatality record as well as examining each airline's operational history, incident records and operational excellence in order to produce its list of the top airlines with which to fly safely and securely.

Airlines are ranked on a seven star system and 148 of the 407 surveyed airlines achieved the top seven-star safety ranking while nearly 50 have only three stars or fewer.

Ten airlines in total have only one safety star to their name.

During 2015 there were a total of 16 incidents totaling 560 fatalities. This was a massive improvement on 2014 when almost a 1,000 people lost their lives.

Last year the world’s airlines carried 3.6 billion passengers on 34 million flights.

If we compare airline safety to how it was 50 years ago, the number of crashes was much higher (averaging at 87) killing 1,597 people while total air travelers only amounted to 141 million (five per cent of the number we have today).