World's safest airlines 2018 revealed

AirlineRatings.com has announced its annual top 20 safest airlines from the 409 it monitors. See the list in the slideshow below

Cathay Pacific. Vivek Prakash / Bloomberg

Virgin Australia. Dan Peled / EPA

Virgin Atlantic. Chris Ratcliffe / Bloomberg

Swiss International Air Lines. Steffen Schmidt / EPA

Singapore Airlines. Regis Duvignau / Reuters

Scandinavian Airlines. Johan Nilsson / EPA

Royal Jordanian. Alexander Klein / AFP

Qantas. Peter Parks / AFP

Lufthansa. Kai Pfaffenbach / Reuters

KLM. Robin Van Lonkhuijsen / EPA - EFE

Japan Airlines. Yoshikazu Tsuno / AFP

Hawaiian Airlines. Ted S Warren / AP Photo

A Finnair jetliner lands at the Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport in Helsinki. Jussi Nukari / AFP

EVA Air. David Chang / EPA

Etihad Airways. Vasily Fedosenko / Reuters

Emirates. Courtesy Emirates

British Airways. Daniel Leal-Olivas / AFP

All Nippon Airways. Toshifumi Kitamura / AFP

Alaska Airlines. Elaine Thompson / AP Photo

Air New Zealand. Marty Melville / AFP

Comfort, in-flight entertainment and scheduling all come into consideration when choosing which airline to fly with.

But how many people actually take a close look at an airline's safety record before typing in their credit card details and completing the booking process?

Help is at hand for those who want some assurance that they are in the safest of hands during their journey, as AirlineRatings.com has revealed its annual top 20 safest airlines list from the 409 it monitors.

The airlines are standouts in the industry and are at the forefront of safety, innovation, and launching of new aircraft, according to editor-in-chief Geoffrey Thomas.

And among the list of 20, which is not ranked, are the UAE's Etihad Airways and Emirates, as well as Emirates partner Qantas which was singled out as the world's safest in the previous four years.

Mr Thomas said that only serious incidents are considered when determining which airlines make the top 20.

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Read more:

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Aviation year in review: For regional airlines, 2017 proved a mixed lot

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“All airlines have incidents every day and many are aircraft manufacture issues, not airline operational problems," he said.

"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.

"Our Top 20 safest airlines are always at the forefront of safety innovation, operational excellence and the launching of new more advanced aircraft like the Airbus A350 and Boeing 787.”

Last year was one of the safest on record for commercial air travel with no accidental deaths on passenger jets, according to analysts.