25 Airlines That Have Never Had a Major Accident

Facts

9.Middle East Three: Emirates, Etihad, Qatar

The so-called “Middle East Three” (Emirates, Etihad and Qatar) have retained safety records free of any major accidents. Each of the three airlines has experienced a potential disaster — from striking an object on takeoff to extreme turbulence — during the recent past, but each was able to avoid a major incident.

And, there’s no reason to suspect that this will change. All three airlines make it into the top 8 of the JACDEC Airline Safety Ranking (No. 2 Emirates, No. 4 Qatar, No. 8 Etihad). Also, Emirates and Etihad are both in AirlineRating.com’s list of the top 20 safest airlines for 2016.

During 2015, Emirates boarded 51.9 million passengers and Etihad carried 17.4 million passengers. Qatar Airways hasn’t released its 2015 passenger traffic publicly.

10.Other International Airlines

There are dozens of other commercial airlines worldwide that have maintained a fatality-free safety record. Rather than listing them all, here are the airlines that both have a clean slate (at least in the past 50 years) and are ranked in the top 20 of either AirlineRatings.com’s or JACDEC’s 2016 safety ranking list:

Air Berlin (founded 1978)
EVA Air (founded 1989)
Finnair (*1963 crash under the airline’s former “Aero” name)
Hainan Airlines (founded 1993)
Swiss International Air Lines (founded 2002)
WestJet (founded 1996)
Bottom Line

Despite recent high-profile accidents, air travel is statistically safer than ever before. There’s no evidence that airlines like Malaysia or Germanwings are any less safe. But, if you’d prefer to travel on an airline that has maintained a clean safety record, there’s a long list of airlines to choose from!