The World’s Safest Airlines for 2025

The Safest Airlines in the World in 2025

A traveller from Lahore who flew to Tokyo by way of Dubai in April 2023 wrote that the first thing they noticed was the aircraft touching down at exactly its scheduled time. Punctuality and a polite welcome are what passengers notice. A safety rating is built mostly from things they never see.

This chart reproduces the list of the safest full-service airlines for 2025 published in January 2025 by AirlineRatings.com, a rating website based in Perth, Australia, which said it had reviewed 385 airlines. Air New Zealand was first and Qantas second. Cathay Pacific, Qatar Airways and Emirates share third place. The chart shows thirteen airlines on eleven numbered places, ending with TAP Portugal, from a full list of 25.

Nine Checks and No Published Score

The grading looks at serious incidents over the past two years, the rate of incidents, fatalities, fleet age, fleet size, profitability, IATA’s operational safety audit (IOSA), whether the airline’s home country passed its audit by ICAO, the UN’s civil aviation agency, and pilot skill and training. The publisher says it also consults check pilots and other aviation experts. An airline with a crash attributed to it, or one that failed IOSA, cannot be considered.

The result is scored in points, but the points are not published. AirlineRatings’ chief executive said only 1.50 points separated Air New Zealand from Qantas, and that Air New Zealand’s younger fleet made the difference. Without the scores, the chart is an order and nothing more: it cannot say how far apart any two airlines are.

A Three-Way Tie and Two Near-Misses

Cathay Pacific, Qatar Airways and Emirates could not be separated, according to the publisher, on fleet age, pilot skill, safety practices, fleet size or incidents. Two well-known carriers missed the list altogether. Singapore Airlines and KLM were left out because of incidents, though both kept AirlineRatings’ top seven-star safety rating.

A Year Later, a Different Order

The 2026 list, published in January 2026, put Etihad first, Cathay Pacific second and Qantas third, with Air New Zealand sixth. It reviewed 320 airlines and gave more weight to turbulence, which the publisher calls the leading cause of injuries on board. The same chief executive said that small numerical differences should not be read as gaps in safety, and that 1.3 points covered first to sixth. By the publisher’s own account, the order at the top turns on very small margins.

Where These Airlines Are Based

One of the nine checks concerns a country rather than an airline. ICAO audits how well each state oversees its own aviation. The thirteen airlines come from eleven places, with two each from Australia (Qantas and Virgin Australia) and the United Arab Emirates (Emirates and Etihad).

Nations Inquiry holds no aviation statistic, and its Mobility & Trade subject follows goods and migrants rather than flights. Its nearest measure of a state’s capacity is the World Bank’s government effectiveness estimate, which rates public services and the civil service in general, not aviation. In its 2025 edition all eleven home places have a positive reading, which only 110 of 209 do. Japan, home of ANA, has the second highest and New Zealand the seventh highest. Qatar, Portugal and South Korea fall among the 42 highest, while Türkiye, home of Turkish Airlines, sits just above zero, with the 109th highest reading.