Emirates, Etihad, Air Arabia among world's safest airlines for 2020

Three UAE airlines have made it to the list of the safest carriers to fly in 2020.

Etihad and Emirates are in the list of the top 20 safest airlines, while Air Arabia is in the list of top 10 low-cost carriers.

The ratings were released by AirlineRatings.com, a safety and product rating website. It named Qantas as the safest airline for 2020, out of the 405 airlines it monitors.

The top 20 are: Qantas, Air New Zealand, EVA Air, Etihad, Singapore Airlines, Emirates, Alaska Airlines, Qatar Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways, Virgin Australia, Hawaiian Airlines, Virgin Atlantic Airlines, TAP Portugal, SAS, Royal Jordanian, Swiss, Finnair, Lufthansa, Aer Lingus and KLM.

"These airlines are clear standouts in the airline industry and are at the forefront of safety," said AirlineRatings.com editor-in-chief Geoffrey Thomas. "For instance, Australia's Qantas has been recognized by the British Advertising Standards Association in a test case in 2008 as the world's most experienced airline."

"Qantas has been the lead airline in virtually every major operational safety advancement over the past 60 years and has not had a fatality in the pure-jet era," said Thomas.

AirlineRatings.com editors also identified their top 10 safest low-cost airlines. These are in alphabetical order: Air Arabia, Flybe, Frontier, HK Express, IndiGo, Jetblue, Volaris, Vueling, Westjet and Wizz.

In making its selections, AirlineRatings.com editors and its industry advisors take into account numerous critical factors that include: audits from aviation's governing bodies and lead associations, government audits, airline's crash and serious incident record, fleet age, financial position and pilot training and culture.

"All airlines have incidents every day and many are aircraft or engine manufacture issues instead of airline operational problems. And it is the way the flight crew handles incidents that determines a good airline from an unsafe one. So just lumping all incidents together is very misleading," said Thomas.