The 10 Safest Airlines in the World

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It’s not possible to 100% guarantee a safe flight -- if it were, those unintentionally funny airplane safety cards wouldn't exist. But that hasn't stopped one travel rating site from coming up with a list of the world's 10 safest airlines.

According to a report by AirlineRatings.com, Qantas, Australia's flagship airline, is the safest airline on the planet. The analysis looked at 449 airlines' histories of operations along with incident and fatality records, awarding each between one to seven stars.

Qantas tops the list for the second year in a row, holding down the title of "world’s most experienced airline” with an “extraordinary record of firsts in safety and operations.” Other notable airlines in the top 10 include British Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways, Emirates, and Singapore Airlines. To wit: a number of busy, national flagship airlines topped the list.

The site also released a list of the safest budget airlines, which named Thomas Cook, Aer Lingus, and JetBlue (if you can even call JetBlue low-cost anymore) among its winners.

Of the 449 carriers included in the report, 149 received seven stars, but worryingly, nearly 50 had three stars or fewer. And four got one single star -- Kam Air, Nepal Airlines, Scat, and Tara Air, which were deemed the most dangerous. Honestly, if you're flying to Kazakhstan on an airline whose name is synonymous with "poop," you've probably made plenty of bad life choices.

Here are the airlines you should feel safest on... listed in alphabetical order, because for some weird reason, that's how the survey listed results.

The top 10 safest airlines:
Air New Zealand
British Airways
Cathay Pacific Airways
Emirates
Etihad Airways
EVA Air
Finnair
Lufthansa
Qantas
Singapore Airlines

And the 10 safest budget airlines:
Aer Lingus
Alaska Airlines
Icelandair
Jetblue
Jetstar
Kulula.com
Monarch Airlines
Thomas Cook
TUI Fly
Westjet

Chloe Pantazi is an editorial assistant on Thrillist's travel team, and doesn’t do well during turbulence. Follow her on Twitter @ChloePantazi.