The world's top 20 safest airlines for this year have been announced by Airlineratings.com and Air New Zealand has come in at second place.
The website rated each of the major international airlines according to a "comprehensive range of factors".
It included audits from aviation governing and industry bodies, government audits, each airline's crash and serious incident record, profitability, industry-leading safety initiatives and fleet age.
Qantas has come out on top with first place.
The Australian airline was recognised by the British Advertising Standards Association in a test case as the world's most experienced airline.
According to AirlineRatings.com editor-in-chief Geoffrey Thomas, Qantas was ranked number one as the real-time monitoring of its engines enabled the airline to detect problems before they became major safety issues.
Thomas told CNN it's the way the flight crew handle incidents that determines a good airline from an unsafe one.
After Air NZ in second place, the Taiwanese international airline EVA Air came third.
In 2019, the safest airlines were listed as Air New Zealand, Alaska Airlines and All Nippon Airways (ANA).
While Air NZ has slipped to second place, Alaska Airlines fell to eight and ANA dropped off the top 20 list altogether.
The full list of AirlineRatings.com's top 20 safest airlines in 2020 is as follows:
- Qantas
- Air New Zealand
- EVA Air
- Etihad
- Qatar Airways
- Singapore Airlines
- Emirates
- Alaska Airlines
- Cathay Pacific Airways
- Virgin Australia
- Hawaiian Airlines
- Virgin Atlantic Airlines
- TAP Portugal,
- SAS
- Royal Jordanian
- Swiss
- Finnair
- Lufthansa
- Aer Lingus
- KLM
AirlineRatings.com also included the top ten safest low-cost airlines for 2020, which includes Air Arabia, Flybe, Frontier, HK Express, IndiGo, Jetblue, Volaris, Vueling, Westjet and Wizz.
"Unlike a number of low-cost carriers, these airlines have all passed the stringent International Air Transport Association Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) and have excellent safety records," Thomas said.
