Cathay Pacific falls 11 places in safety rankings, hits out at ‘unreliable’ evaluator

Cathay Pacific Airways’ safety ranking in an international index fell from top spot to 12th place this year, prompting the airline to hit back, declaring such surveys were “not a competition”.

The airline issued a scathing attack at Germany’s Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Centre (Jacdec) as it put Emirates on top, followed by budget airline Norwegian and then Virgin Atlantic, while Cathay slipped 11 places.

Hong Kong’s main carrier was ranked 1st from 2015 to 2017 by Jacdec. A revamp of the index declares there should not be “any comparison to former rankings” as Jacdec removed older safety indexes from its website, but that did not deflect the criticism from carriers like Cathay.

The latest rankings came after 2017 marked the safest year on record in commercial aviation, with no airline accidents or fatalities.

“High standards of safety are paramount in the airline industry. It is not a competition, but the utmost priority for us all,” a spokeswoman for Cathay said. “We go above and beyond all regulatory and industry standards and requirements in all aspects of our business to ensure safety for our operations and our passengers.”

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Ahead of Jacdec publishing a full list of safest airlines on Tuesday, based on the 100 largest passenger carriers, the evaluator said its results “intends to distinguish airlines by their existent level of safety risks rather than their ratio between bygone accidents and flight performance”.