Why Southwest Airlines should still celebrate its air safety success

Plane Talk: the carrier’s obsession with care of its passengers will continue, and I will continue to choose to fly it ahead of other US domestic carriers

Can any airline passenger, however confident, genuinely claim never to have felt a frisson of fear? I like to think I am sufficiently rational and steeped in statistics that show how flying has become implausibly safe. But in the event of a go-around – when, well into the descent, the aircraft suddenly soars because of a problem on the runway – I involuntarily grip the armrests. And in the days when flights from London to Singapore went over eastern Ukraine, half an hour of extreme turbulence even in an Airbus A380 was psychologically as well as physically unsettling.

The tragedy this week in the US, when an uncontained engine failure on a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 led to the death of a passenger, was a stark reminder of vulnerability when six miles above the surface of the earth.

I take comfort from the supreme professionalism of the captain and first officer in landing the wounded aircraft safely in Philadelphia.

But at the extreme end of the safety spectrum, the sad death of Jennifer Riordan changed the arithmetic.

Until 17 April 2018, Southwest was unrivalled as the safest airline in the world, at least on the measure I believe is the most significant: the number of people flown without a single passenger fatality. Since its first flight in Texas in 1971, the Dallas-based airline had flown 1.8 billion travellers safely.

Southwest’s obsession with care of its passengers will continue, and I will continue to choose the airline over all other US domestic carriers. But Ryanair is now unchallenged leader of that rarified league, with 1.1 billion passengers – one third more than the second placed airline, easyJet, on 820 million.

But not everyone agrees with my assessment. “Please do some research before writing rubbish news,” demands Bruce Blake. “Qantas Airlines has held and continues to hold, that safety record.”

That response puzzled me, because the Australian airline has sadly lost a number of passengers and crew in accidents. Granted, Qantas has had a phenomenally good record since 1951 (which counts as prehistory in aviation terms). But the airport scene in the 1988 film Rain Man is, if I may, “rubbish news”.

Charlie Babbitt (played by Tom Cruise): “Ray, all airlines have crashed at one time or another. That doesn't mean they are not safe.”

Raymond Babbitt (Dustin Hoffman): “Qantas. Qantas never crashed.”

If you look at an entirely different measure, “number of years without a fatal accident”, the Australian airline does extremely well: Qantas is approaching its seventh decade. But even that record belongs to a different carrier.

From Hawaii, Nicolas Augusta writes: “Hawaiian Airlines has flown since 1929 and has never lost a passenger. They hold the record for safe flying. Hands down.”

For an airline to have reached its 90th year without a fatal accident is extraordinary – especially since, before the Second World War, aviation safety was frankly flimsy. The achievement is magnificent, but I disagree with Mr Augusta that “They hold the record for safe flying”. Ryanair flies as many people in a month as Hawaiian does in a year, and my analysis of passenger numbers (albeit with patchy sources) is that the Honolulu-based carrier has flown fewer than 250 million passengers in its history (less than Ryanair does in two years, and easyJet does in three).

But how wonderful to be able to discuss the relative merits of airlines that have collectively delivered billions of travellers to their destinations. That has been achieved by forensic analysis of past accidents, fatal and otherwise, and global collaboration. Every aspect of Southwest flight 1380 will be examined, and the lessons learned will make aviation even safer.

Perhaps one day the same skills and energy will be applied to improving safety on the roads: on average, every 13 minutes someone dies on the highways of the US. Until the figures improve, be very afraid. But on the roads, not in the skies.