Boogie Nights

How safe is your airline?
How Safe Is Your Airline? - Page 1 - The Daily Beast


1. AirTran
2. JetBlue
3. Southwest
4. US Airways
5. American
6. Alaska
7. Continental
8. Delta
9. Northwest
10. United

Thoughts?
We do have among the newest fleets. We have a strong ASAP program.
Safety is stressed.

III Corps

We are all striving for a safe operation, especially if one has a front row seat.

I hope you also have a FOQA up and running. ASAPs are fine but they tend to be subjective and either over or under-represent the actual situation (not necessarily by intent).

We all know that there are daily incidents which are inches away from 1) not occurring or 2) becoming an accident. And most of that either goes unreported, especially if there is no FOQA. As Matthews at Flight Safety said, (paraphrase), 'Before FOQA we really had no clue as to what daily ops were like."

I would take such a survey with a grain of salt as the needle is constantly moving and statistically things can change dramatically quickly. Prior to Concorde going down at CDG, it has the BEST safety record of any airliner and with one fatal crash, it went to worst.

slowplay

Is that why one of your ALPA ASAP ERC member was fired?

Reads like something was stressed, but maybe not Safety...

Twin Wasp

They've got ATI listed as a regional!

You can make numbers say whatever you want. We haven't had a "National Carrier" fatal in how many years? US Airways had a hull loss but they're safer than Delta who hasn't. Until you know the methodology, it's meaningless. Is having an engine fire the same as a bad crew meal? They're both incidents.

(Yea, I'll just skip the next ten responses to bad crew meals.)

johnso29

Good points. I glanced over the article, & it looks fairly skewed. Did they include the ValueJet statistics in AirTrans #'s? Is it an average based on how long each company has operated? NWA/DAL have been operating since the 1920's, much longer then AT.

The article just seems silly. However, the industry has made HUGE strides in safety over the last 15 years. That, & our continued effort to improve safety are what's important. IMO.

rvr350

If we think like a pilot instead of a statistician (just for a sec, takeoff and landings are the most safety vulnerable time of any flight. The #1 spot should go to WN hands down based on number of t/o & ldg on such a large fleet. Besides MDW and some minor scuff that never even made the paper, they've been running a tight ship for a long time.

Just my 2 cents.

Kat Milliker

I don't think that AAI deserves that ranking. We don't have AQP, and the culture of safety that used to exist has been given a back seat to cost and "on-time".

As someone else pointed out, two terminations of union safety officers?

Hello- Earth to Orlando- If you wanna end up on "60 Minutes", you're doing the right things. If not- better start making some changes.

rvr350

Good point. Plus safety starts with adequate a training department. "Archaic" would be a compliment to the Eastern dinosaurs that run that place.

HSLD

Looks like Aloha was the safest airline last year.

What was the quote from that 1980's movie War Games: "The only way to win thermonuclear war is not to play". I guess the way to be the safest airline is not to operate airplanes.

Not a slight at our brothers and sisters who lost their job at Aloha. I'm just pointing out that the conclusions used here may simply be what the author wants them to be not what the stats support.

The article pulls from Airline Safety Records and Comparisons as the source. Visit that site and see what you think about the info provided.

The first thing I noticed was an ad to adopt children from Eastern Europe, that exudes credibility. Also, The source of "Comparison of Airline Security Fines" looked at the period 1998-2000. I belive we're ina different era now.
The "United Airlines accused of jeopardizing safety to cut costs..." link is to a article published in 2003.

Finally, did anyone else notice the condo vacation rental link just under the Accident and Turbulence link at the right of the site?

They talk about how they arrive at the stats, but they don't provide any raw data that allows others to check their work, Junk Science at best.

Splanky

It would be an incredibly difficult job to actually rank the airlines safety. Especially as HSLD points out, they are using very inaccurate data. If the author is deciding to use past data from that long ago, might as well consider a certain airline's former name into the mix too.