What are the world's safest airlines for 2018?

Australia-based aviation analysis website AirlineRatings.com has just released its annual list of the world's safest airlines. Of the 409 airlines it monitors, 20 stand out as the "best of the best," says AirlineRatings.com's editor-in-chief Geoffrey Thomas. These 20 airlines, he says, are "always at the forefront of safety innovation, operational excellence and the launching of new more advanced aircraft." From 2014 to 2017, AirlineRatings.com named Australian airline Qantas the world's safest airline, and once again AirlineRatings.com has commended it for being "the lead airline in virtually every major operational safety advancement over the past 60 years" without a single fatality in the jet era. "But Qantas is not alone," says Thomas. "Long-established airlines such as Hawaiian and Finnair have perfect records in the jet era." This year, AirlineRatings.com has decided to honor the top 20 airlines on equal footing. The top 20 for 2018, in alphabetical order are: Air New Zealand, Alaska Airlines, All Nippon Airways, British Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways, Emirates, Etihad Airways, EVA Air, Finnair, Hawaiian Airlines, Japan Airlines, KLM, Lufthansa, Qantas, Royal Jordanian Airlines, Scandinavian Airline System, Singapore Airlines, Swiss, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia. Notably absent from the 2018 list are the US airlines Delta and United. In April 2017, Delta's enviable record of years of reliable service was blotted by a five-day meltdown in which more than 3,200 flights were canceled in response to storms. In the same month, United Airlines' reputation took a serious battering when a video went viral of a passenger being dragged off an overbooked flight.<br/>