How we rate airline safety: the safety band

The four bands

1 Very low risk
2 Low risk
3 Moderate risk: see the details
4 Higher risk

What the band is

Every airline gets one of four bands, from "Very low risk" to "Higher risk". We never give exact odds for one airline and never a guarantee: the band is an estimate built from public safety audits and official lists.

For scale: worldwide, flying caused about 1 death per 13.7 million passenger boardings in 2018–2022 (MIT, Barnett & Reig Torra, 2024). Every band is shown with this figure.

Step 1: the home country's safety oversight

The start is how well the airline's home country implements international safety standards, measured by ICAO's audits (Effective Implementation, EI). 75% or more starts in band 1 (75% is ICAO's own global target), 60–75% in band 2, below 60% or never audited in band 3.

For now we use the average of the eight audit areas in ICAO's public viewer (legislation, organisation, licensing, operations, airworthiness, accident investigation, air navigation, aerodromes). Each country's page says which figure we use and when we checked it.

Step 2: red flags

Each red flag moves the airline down one band, never below band 4:

Not on the IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) registry, or the registration has expired. This counts only for airlines that fly jets.

The home country is in Category 2 of the US FAA's International Aviation Safety Assessment. Countries the FAA has not assessed are not marked down.

The home country has an open ICAO significant safety concern.

More than 50% of the fleet is turboprop aircraft (from our fleet data).

The airline is on Annex B of the EU Air Safety List (allowed to fly to the EU only under restrictions).

An airline banned from the EU (Annex A) goes straight to band 4.

Context, not part of the band

We also show the years since the airline's last fatal accident (from the Aviation Safety Network) and the average age of its fleet. Both are context only: a single accident, or its absence, says little about risk today.

What the band does not tell you

It does not rate a single flight, aircraft, crew or route, and it is not a prediction. Audits and lists are updated at different times, so an input can be months old; every input shows the date we checked it.

If an input is missing, we give no band and say so, rather than guess.

How we keep it current

We re-check every source once a month, and the EU list and FAA results also when they change. The data is prepared by our team and reviewed by Vincent Trienpont before a page goes live. Found an error? Tell us through the contact page and we will correct it.

Sources

Method reviewed by: Vincent Trienpont. · Report a correction