Do low-cost airlines cut corners on safety as well as sandwiches?

The fares are cheap, the service is basic and the margins are tight. But there are sound financial reasons not to compromise safety

You can hear the panic in the voice as it crackles from the flight deck of the DC-9. "Five ninety-two needs immediate return to Miami. We're on fire, we're on fire."

The date was 11 May 1996; the location, just west of Miami; the aftermath, all 110 passengers and crew died when the plane plunged headlong into the Florida Everglades a few minutes later.

ValuJet flight 592 had just taken off from Florida's biggest city, destination Atlanta. It was full of travellers attracted by cheap flights aboard the upstart no-frills airline. In its hold was a consignment of oxygen generators: aircraft parts intended to help keep passengers and crew alive if the cabin depressurises – but potential hazards when not properly transported. They were not properly boxed, and were stored in a hold without a smoke detector or fire extinguisher.

The cockpit voice recorder survived. But the damage to the McDonnell Douglas jet was so catastrophic that accident investigators could not tell whether the crash happened because of a mechanical loss of control or because the crew – commanded by the first American female captain to lose her life in an accident – were incapacitated by the fire.

ValuJet was blamed for poor maintenance practices and had its licence revoked by the National Transportation Safety Board. The veracity of the old aviation adage – "If you think safety is expensive, try having an accident" – was confirmed once again.

When the airline started flying again, it had rebranded itself as AirTran. But some of the American travelling public remain unconvinced by the safety standards of low-cost airlines. With prices so cheap, the argument goes, might not corners be cut on safety as well as sandwiches?

Fortunately, evidence to the contrary can easily be found in the skies above the United States. At a typical moment on a typical day, about 200 Boeing 737s are flying the drab colours of Southwest Airlines across America. The orange and brown stripes belong to the safest airline in the world.

Hang on, you may be thinking, what about Qantas? Famously, in Barry Levinson's 1988 film Rain Man, Raymond Babbitt (played by Dustin Hoffman) asserts "Qantas never crashed". This piece of dialogue might have helped Levinson win the Oscar for best director and movie, and Hoffman the award for best actor. But it set back the cause of rational discussion of air safety by years. Movie-goers concluded that the Australian carrier was the only airline in the world never to have suffered a crash. In fact, the Australian airline has had plenty of accidents, but thankfully has always managed to crash gently, without loss of life.

Many other carriers, from Emirates to Virgin Atlantic – and including all of Europe's no-frills airlines – have never suffered a fatal accident. But none has flown anything near as many missions as Southwest. So confident is the original low-cost airline about its operational integrity that the cabin crew can afford to joke about safety. When my Southwest flight from Seattle to Kansas City touched down, instead of the dreary "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Kansas City where the local time is ...", the flight attendant breathed heavily into the microphone. "Phew," gasped Duane Redmond as the aircraft slowed. "Made it."

The British air traffic controller who has made allegations about the behaviour of pilots from low-cost airlines is in no mood for humour. He or she is feeling increasingly under pressure.

After the downturn caused by 11 September, air traffic to and from Britain is increasing sharply once more, with almost all the growth coming from no-frills airlines.

Next week, Ryanair begins flying from Stansted to Klagenfurt in Austria. It will be the 40th new low-cost route from Britain in the first six months of this year.

Ryanair makes about £10 profit from each passenger, largely by being ruthless on costs. Planes and people are worked much harder than on traditional airlines. In particular, the turn-round time – from the moment the pilot of the inbound aircraft applies the parking brake at the gate to the start of the push-back at departure – is typically scheduled to take only 25 minutes. If the arrival is delayed, there is no slack to help to make up time.

Naturally, pilots are concerned to avoid hold-ups. But are they cutting corners, literally and figuratively? The assertions made anonymously to the Confidential Human Factors Incident Reporting Programme do not suggest to me that captains are disobeying air traffic control instructions, but that they are questioning those orders much more often.

Air traffic control in Britain is an honourable profession, with its roots in the military – a regime where directions are obeyed, not debated. The UK's highly regarded controllers are not used to having decisions challenged. But there is anecdotal evidence that some pilots are getting bolshie rather than complying with instructions.

Lots of workers are under pressure to achieve targets in their jobs – improbably though it may seem, sometimes even journalists have been known to take short cuts to meet deadlines. But it is a transgression of a different order for someone responsible for the lives of 150 passengers to risk, say, approaching an airport at too high a speed.

All the no-frills airlines reject the suggestion that they would tolerate, let alone encourage, any pilot who sought to overrule air traffic control. But in low-cost aviation, more than almost any other industry, time is money – and a 10-minute delay attributed to air traffic control can easily snowball.

The captain of a Ryanair jet waiting on the ground at Biarritz in south-west France, which had been ready for departure for some time, announced pointedly to passengers that "Apparently we have to wait for two Air France aircraft to leave before we are allowed to move". Accusations of favouritism for the "home team" are commonly made by pilots.

Controllers in France, Greece, Portugal and Italy, meanwhile, maintain that their only concern is safety. They say this is why they are striking today, in protest against plans for a "single European sky" rather than the present piecemeal arrangement – which they say is safer.

For pilots wilfully to disobey instructions is almost unthinkable, but some passengers would be happier if flight crews never argued the toss with the referees of the sky.

Controllers do not need the added stress of arguing with pilots over every decision, and many in aviation are privately glad that the issue has been so publicly aired.

The airlines are still well short of being shown a yellow card. I would happily fly anywhere on any low-cost carrier this morning, but instead I am planning to do something far more dangerous: to cycle across London.

Flying, thank goodness, is amazingly safe. As Duane Redmond, the Southwest flight attendant, says at the start of his safety briefing: "We never anticipate a sudden change in air pressure; if we did, I'd get another job." And so would I.

Budget airlines: a booming business

Ryanair

Ryanair is based in Dublin with its main British centre at Stansted. It started operations in 1985 and operates 76 routes. Last year, it carried 12 million passengers and has ambitious plans for expansion. It is currently Europe's seventh biggest airline. Earlier this month it announced a 44 per cent increase in after-tax profits for the year to nearly £100m.

EasyJet

EasyJet is based at London Luton. It started operations in October 1995 and operates 45 routes. In the past 12 months it carried 8.3 million passengers. While not the biggest operator, it has the biggest profile thanks in part to its ebullient outgoing chairman Stelios Haji-Ioannou who started the airline in 1995. By the time it floated in November 2000, it was worth £770m.

Go

Go, being taken over by easyJet, is based at London Stansted. A late entrant to the market, it was set up by BA in 1998, to counter the rise of the no-frills airlines but was sold last year to a management buyout for £100m. It operates 38 routes. Last year, it carried 4.3 million passengers.

Bmibaby

Bmibaby is part of the British Midland group and is based at East Midlands Airport. It is the newest of the budget airlines,launched in March this year. It operates nine routes and after 11 weeks, it had sold more than 200,000 seats.

Buzz

Buzz is a wholly-owned subsidiary of KLM and is based at London Stansted. It was launched in January 2000 and operates 21 routes from Stansted and four domestic services in France. Last year it carried 1.4 million passengers but is unprofitable.