Air New Zealand has been ranked the safest airline in the world for 2022 by AirlineRatings.com, which monitors 385 carriers globally.
The airline review website cited the company’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, its serious incident record, and its operations in difficult environments in its decision.
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“All airlines have incidents every day and many are aircraft manufacture issues, not airline operational problems,” the website’s editor-in-chief, Geoffrey Thomas, said. “It is the way the flight crew handles incidents that determines a good airline from an unsafe one.”
The website cited safety improvements the airline made to its navigation system and said it “excelled across the broad safety spectrum.” It also said the airline has a fleet with an average age of 6.8 years.
“Air New Zealand is very humbled to receive this recognition, particularly given the high safety standards the airline industry holds itself to,” Air New Zealand CEO Greg Foran told the website. “For us, it’s not about safety first — it’s about safety always.”
The title for safest airline was previously held by Qantas, an Australian airline that previously won the recognition from 2014-17 and then again from 2019-20.
This time around, Qantas still ranks in the top 20 airlines for safety but not in the top five. The website cited an incident at Perth Airport in 2018 in which one of its planes nearly collided into another plane. The review website said the incident report came out too late for it to be factored into its 2021 rankings.
Several U.S. airline companies also made it into the top 20 safest airlines for 2022, including Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, American Airlines, and Alaska Airlines. Frontier, Jetstar Group, and JetBlue made it into the company’s list for the top 10 safest low-cost airlines for 2022.
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Air New Zealand became one of the first airlines in the world to mandate vaccinations for customers. The mandate will apply to international customers over 18 beginning Feb. 1.
“Throughout the pandemic, the whole Air New Zealand team has been focused on protecting the health and safety of our people, customers, and the wider New Zealand community,” Foran said.
