Have Your Say

Kerrie of United Kingdom

September 9, 2014

I was so happy to find this site as I like a thorough run down of information on an airline before booking any flight, being a lifelong nervous flier.

I’ve just found cheap flights with Air China to Thailand this Christmas, so thought I would check out their rating on this site. To my surprise, they rate 7/7 for safety…. I thought this a little odd as the mention of flying with Air China tends to get a snigger out of people.

I figured I might as well double check elsewhere (better to be safe than sorry) so Googled ‘Air China crashes’ and sure enough a wealth of information came up about all sorts of accidents – fatal or otherwise – within the last couple of decades, with the most recent one being just 10 years ago and one before that in 2002 which killed everyone on board!

How the hell this airline gets a 7/7 for SAFETY is beyond me??? I’m really disappointed that I now won’t be able to use this site for accurate information. I recently booked a flight to Croatia on Croatia Airlines after reading about their high safety rating on this site …. I have just double checked (following the Air China surprise!) and thankfully that rating appears to be correct across all the other sites too. Thank God as I am flying with them this weekend and would’ve freaked out if I’d found out they are actually a terrible airline, three days before take off!!!!

I think parts of this site may need amending…. Until then I won’t be putting my trust in it.

Editors' Comment

Changes in aviation in China over the past 12 years have been huge!! The International Civil Aviation Authority whom we work with (the worlds largest governing aviation body) suggest we deduct a star for accidents with fatalities for five years as this is enough time to ensure the problem is fixed across the global fleet network and to ensure any lack in pilot training or maintenance is rectified. We actually choose to DOUBLE this time and deduct a star for fatalities for 10 years. With regards to incidents or accidents - these happen every single day and if we deducted stars for this then EVERY airline in the world would have a zero star safety rating. check out this site that shows incidents and accidents - every airline you know and trust is in there http://avherald.com/ but often it's how a crew and airline handle these things that makes them safer. Our ratings are not designed to tell you how safe an airline "was" - if that was the case all Chinese airlines would score low. Our safety rating is to give you an idea of how safe an airline is right now and we re-assess these ratings every single week. We are the only safety rating site that is endorsed by ICAO and I can guarantee you that you won't find a better safety rating system out there that works with the worlds biggest governing bodies in aviation safety.