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The mention of Pakistan's "chequered aviation safety record" got me wondering how it compares to other airlines. I came across this site [0], and found the da

The mention of Pakistan's "chequered aviation safety record" got me wondering how it compares to other airlines. I came across this site [0], and found the data to be really interesting. Pakistan International Airlines ranks decently well, while Southwest Airlines ranks among the worst. [0] https://www.airlineratings.com/safety-rating-tool/ https://www.airlineratings.com/safety-rating-tool/

khuey 6y ago
Given that Southwest Airlines has killed one passenger in its entire history I'm going to say that a methodology that ranks them among the worst in safety is likely suspect.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  I was going to say, that doesn’t pass the sniff test. Excluding this current incident, PIA has killed 102 passengers and crew since 2000. The most expansive view of Southwest’s record would include 4 fatalities: one passenger, two people on the ground, and another passenger who died of a medical issue while being restrained. One of those ground deaths was because someone walked onto the runway and was hit by a landing 737, so I’m not inclined to blame Southwest for that.
  - p_l 6y ago
    Incidents and other things that normal passengers don't hear about a large role in such statistics.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      While I agree, one would expect incidents to scale roughly with the rate of fatalities. With PIA having 2 orders of magnitude more fatalities in this century, it would take some pretty extraordinary non-fatality incident statistics to declare that PIA is much safer than Southwest. Also worth considering is fatalities per flight hour. While I couldn’t find accurate flight hours for all the airlines, Southwest has a much larger fleet (752 vs. 31). Combined with a much lower fatality count (arguably 2 vs. 102), this implies that Southwest is much, much safer than PIA. It’s possible that non-fatal incidents can cover that gap, but at a high level analysis this seems implausible.
      - p_l 6y ago
        Checking further, it seems that at least some of the ratings depend on having passed IATA audit, which is voluntary. So a Low Cost immediately loses on that.
  - selectodude 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1248 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1248 One of the crazier things I've seen. Really the only fatality a Southwest pilot is responsible for.
tyingq 6y ago
They are dinging Southwest mostly because it has never asked for IOSA certification. There's no requirement for them to do so, because they aren't an IATA member.
jcrawfordor 6y ago
This finding is an artifact of their methodology. Southwest is not EU admitted because they only recently expanded to routes outside of the US and have not so far expanded outside of the Americas (they may not want to as it would introduce real complications to unified-fleet their business model). They are not fatality-free in the last ten years, but their fatality in 2018 was the only passenger fatality they have ever experienced. This incident also seemed fairly fault-free on the part of Southwest as it resulted in guidance changes requiring more frequent inspection of the engine model involved than previously. Perhaps they should undergo IOSA audit, but it is entirely optional and is viewed as less necessary in the US because the FAA's mandatory safety oversight is similarly strict. It is mostly a certification obtained by airlines to demonstrate that they are "as safe" as their peers, and as the largest carrier in the US with an excellent safety record, Southwest is probably just not very inclined to go to the extra expense for a certificate to hang on the wall. I would say this is a basic problem with evaluating airline safety based on external accreditation rather than on their actual safety record. However, I'm sure the latter would be much more difficult to do globally.
- kube-system 6y ago
  This is like ranking software engineers solely on the number of Microsoft certifications they have and the total number of open issues in their GitHub repos.
rootusrootus 6y ago
I do not trust that web site. Their methodology is suspect (see Southwest Airlines, as you mention) and their data is suspect (Alaska Airlines has no fatalities? No, they have had 9 accidents that resulted in at least one death, including several that resulted in all lives on the plane lost).
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Flight 261’s crash killing 88 because of “poorly conceived and woefully executed“ maintenance procedures sure feels like something that should show up on that list.

khuey 6y ago

Given that Southwest Airlines has killed one passenger in its entire history I'm going to say that a methodology that ranks them among the worst in safety is likely suspect.

ashtonkem 6y ago
I was going to say, that doesn’t pass the sniff test. Excluding this current incident, PIA has killed 102 passengers and crew since 2000. The most expansive view of Southwest’s record would include 4 fatalities: one passenger, two people on the ground, and another passenger who died of a medical issue while being restrained. One of those ground deaths was because someone walked onto the runway and was hit by a landing 737, so I’m not inclined to blame Southwest for that.
- p_l 6y ago
  Incidents and other things that normal passengers don't hear about a large role in such statistics.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    While I agree, one would expect incidents to scale roughly with the rate of fatalities. With PIA having 2 orders of magnitude more fatalities in this century, it would take some pretty extraordinary non-fatality incident statistics to declare that PIA is much safer than Southwest. Also worth considering is fatalities per flight hour. While I couldn’t find accurate flight hours for all the airlines, Southwest has a much larger fleet (752 vs. 31). Combined with a much lower fatality count (arguably 2 vs. 102), this implies that Southwest is much, much safer than PIA. It’s possible that non-fatal incidents can cover that gap, but at a high level analysis this seems implausible.
    - p_l 6y ago
      Checking further, it seems that at least some of the ratings depend on having passed IATA audit, which is voluntary. So a Low Cost immediately loses on that.
- selectodude 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1248 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1248 One of the crazier things I've seen. Really the only fatality a Southwest pilot is responsible for.

tyingq 6y ago

They are dinging Southwest mostly because it has never asked for IOSA certification. There's no requirement for them to do so, because they aren't an IATA member.

jcrawfordor 6y ago

This finding is an artifact of their methodology. Southwest is not EU admitted because they only recently expanded to routes outside of the US and have not so far expanded outside of the Americas (they may not want to as it would introduce real complications to unified-fleet their business model). They are not fatality-free in the last ten years, but their fatality in 2018 was the only passenger fatality they have ever experienced. This incident also seemed fairly fault-free on the part of Southwest as it resulted in guidance changes requiring more frequent inspection of the engine model involved than previously. Perhaps they should undergo IOSA audit, but it is entirely optional and is viewed as less necessary in the US because the FAA's mandatory safety oversight is similarly strict. It is mostly a certification obtained by airlines to demonstrate that they are "as safe" as their peers, and as the largest carrier in the US with an excellent safety record, Southwest is probably just not very inclined to go to the extra expense for a certificate to hang on the wall. I would say this is a basic problem with evaluating airline safety based on external accreditation rather than on their actual safety record. However, I'm sure the latter would be much more difficult to do globally.

kube-system 6y ago
This is like ranking software engineers solely on the number of Microsoft certifications they have and the total number of open issues in their GitHub repos.

rootusrootus 6y ago

I do not trust that web site. Their methodology is suspect (see Southwest Airlines, as you mention) and their data is suspect (Alaska Airlines has no fatalities? No, they have had 9 accidents that resulted in at least one death, including several that resulted in all lives on the plane lost).

ashtonkem 6y ago
Flight 261’s crash killing 88 because of “poorly conceived and woefully executed“ maintenance procedures sure feels like something that should show up on that list.