Where do one find a credible list

What make an airline "most dangerous"? What are they ranked by?

 

You could certainly rank fatalities by miles traveled.

I would guess that the bottom 50 would be filled out by eastern block airlines and African airlines-- third world airlines in general are bad news. I doubt if any US certificated carriers would make it on to that list.

On the other hand, Southwest has never killed a passenger in an accident.

 

Well then, what is their prefered method of doing them in?


Food poisioning?

Knife wielding Stews?

 

Killed by the other passengers, actually:

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/20/business/business-travel-apparent-case-air-rage-southwest-airlines-ends-what-later-ruled.html

They also killed someone on the ground when a Southwest aircraft ran off a runway and collided with a car. However, I assume the OP was asking about the safest airlines for passengers, and thus that wouldn't be relevant.

 

I guess that statistics can be used for anything.

I'd fly THY any day before I'd fly say, Cubana, Iran Air, PIA, any sub-Saharan airline except SAA, etc.

 

I'm rather surprised to find Saudi, Turkish and Thai on the dangerous list and Transaero on the safe list. Yes, Turkish did have the one DC-10 disaster, but did that alone put it on the list?

And considering that it's a rather generic name, is the Skywest on the list the U.S. regional airline?

 

You missed the one that killed 346 in March 1974. Had they turned on the autopilot they would have survived since the a/p controls are in the ceiling in the DC-10. poor systems knowledge are contributing factors. That crew failed their first checkride in type.

 

The problem with surveys like this is that a fatal accident that is not the airline's fault is still counted. In the case of the midair with the Il-76, I believe that either the controllers or the Il-76 crew were found at fault; I'm not sure which. In a case like this, the fact that the other aircraft was Saudi's becomes irrelevant.

I seem to remember that the 301 fatalities were on an L-1011 that had a cabin fire while on approach and landed normally, but no doors were ever opened and all of the occupants were killed by the fire. Still one of the strangest airline disasters.

There is a U.S. regional (commuter) airline also called Skywest. I gather that the one referred to in the survey is a different carrier.

 

There are 2 Skywest airlines that I know of The Skywest that operates as United Express, Delta Connection and off and on for a few other US major carriers.

An NTSB database query shows that the US Skywest has had no fatal accidents.

http://ntsb.gov/ntsb/Response2.asp?spage=1&x_page_size=10&sql=Y&p1=1%2F1%2F1980&p2=1%2F16%2F2011&p3=&p4=&p5=&p6=&p7=&p8=&p9=&p10=&p11=&p12=skywest&p13=&p14=&p15=&p16=ev_date&p17=Desc&p18=&p19=&p20=&p21=&p22=&p23=&p24=

Then there is SkyWest a regional carrier in Australia.

I don't know much about there safety records.

 

Doors dont open when the cabin is still pressurized. He continued to roll after touchdown for nearly 3 minutes passing the rescue workers. Had they dumped the cabin perhaps there would have been survivors? They found the pressurization switch in Standby and the outflow valves closed. It took 23 minutes to open the fuelsage after the engines were shutdown in contrast to the FEDEX Newburgh DC-10 fire which evacuated in 20 minutes from 33,000 ft to landing.

 

346 dead is still 346 dead! 2nd worst accident in history. It is still very significant.

We still use it in recurrent training when we fail manual control and expect the crews to turn on the a/p.

many accidents are more than 30 years old and we still learn from them.

Tenerife, Tigers 747 in KL, United 173, Air Florida 90, Delta 191, and so on and so on..........................

 

You know, I'd probably start with the list of airlines who are banned from operating in the EU:

http://ec.europa.eu/transport/air-ban/doc/list_en.pdf