What to Know About Airline Safety Records

Getty Images The Daily Beast’s Clive Irving responds to the ranking of the best and worst airline safety records—and offers his own suggestions for concerned fliers.

Behind the statistics of airline safety records, what are the things to look for?

First, reputation.

AirTran, topping the ratings for domestic carriers, is a textbook case of turning around a brand with a bad reputation. Until 1997 the airline was called ValuJet, known for old planes and cheap tickets. In 1996, 111 people died when a ValuJet DC9 crashed into the Florida Everglades, as a result of a fire ignited by oxygen cylinders placed (illegally) in a cargo bay. Since then the airline’s fleet of DC9s has been replaced by Boeing 717s (descended from the DC9 but far more sophisticated) and Boeing 737s. Air Tran built its new market by being a budget airline for business travellers—it has just equipped its fleet with WiFi.

When it comes to safety, a little-known but essential detail can be not the age of an airliner but the age of its design. They are not the same thing.

Then there is Southwest Airlines (number three) a case of a well-earned good reputation that has been dented. Southwest pioneered budget city-to-city air travel, and in the process transformed passenger expectations for service, safety and value—and, at the same time, transformed the worldwide airline business model. The blot on Southwest’s record is maintenance. Last year it was handed a fine of $10.2 million for flying Boeing 737s without fixing cracks in the fuselage, as mandated. Southwest then cancelled a plan to outsource maintenance to El Salvador.

After staying out of the Northeast’s main city markets since its birth in 1967, Southwest is now flying from New York and Boston, to compete with Jet Blue, its most accomplished budget rival.

When it comes to safety, a little-known but essential detail can be not the age of an airliner but the age of its design. They are not the same thing.

The most salient example of this is the Boeing 737 (exclusively flown by Southwest and ubiquitous throughout U.S. domestic routes). The 737 got a new lease of life with what are called the NG models—New Generation. The wings and horizontal stabilizers and avionics are indeed all new, but the fuselage is essentially the same one that was designed in the 1950s for the first Boeing jetliner, the 707.

Sitting in a 737 you are in a structure built with the technology of that time, in which sections are riveted together.