(In the last sentence, the year was corrected: 2023 rpt 2023.)

HAMBURG/FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - The Arab airlines Etihad and Emirates were again particularly safe on the road last year. In the risk analysis of the Hamburg-based air accident agency Jacdec, the two airlines from the United Arab Emirates are ahead of the Dutch KLM, the U.S. JetBlue and the British Easyjet in the comparison.

Lufthansa ranked 14th in the global ranking of the 25 airlines with the highest traffic performance. Etihad, which was not evaluated in 2021, displaced Emirates to second place. Both airlines have comparatively young fleets, according to the report, which is published in the aviation magazine "Aero International" (February issue).

Following the Russian attack on Ukraine, the Russian airline Aeroflot was significantly downgraded, landing only in 25th place. Safety-related reasons for the downgrade included the illegal admission of Western leased jets to the Russian register and the interrupted supply of spare parts in Russia due to economic sanctions.

The Jacdec Risk Index is based on each airline's accident history over the past 30 years, the country-specific environment in which it operates, and specific airline risk factors. Theoretically, an index value of 100 is achievable, but even the best airlines fall short. The passenger kilometers flown by the airlines are important: The more of these an airline covers without an accident, the lower the risk and therefore the safer it is considered to be in this ranking.

Among the busiest carriers in Europe, Finnair achieved the highest index value, followed by KLM and Transavia. Lufthansa subsidiary Eurowings ranked eighth and vacation carrier Condor twelfth. Lufthansa's core airline was 15th in this traffic area.

Basically, an extremely high level of safety was achieved again in the year of the restart after the Corona lull in civil air traffic, said study director Jan-Arwed Richter. Thus, individual events had a particularly strong influence on the statistics.

The most serious accident of the year was the crash of a China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 on March 21 near the southern Chinese city of Wuzhou. All 132 people on board died. The accident is believed to have been caused by the suicide of the co-pilot. Jacdec is relying on insider information, while Chinese investigating authorities have so far kept a low profile.

In total, Jacdec recorded 19 air accidents with fatalities last year, in which a total of 233 people died. That was 60 more deaths than in 2021, when there was significantly less flying. The average for the past ten years is 372 fatalities.

The German Air Transport Association (BDL), using slightly different definitions of the aircraft size taken into account, arrives at twelve accidents with 205 fatalities. The association points to the ever decreasing probability of being killed in a crash during a flight. If in the 1970s there was still statistically one fatality for every 264,000 passengers, there was now only one victim among nearly 16 million passengers. "Flying was therefore 59 times safer in 2022 than in the 1970s," concludes the BDL.

These messages seem to have resonated with the public. In Yougov surveys commissioned by BDL, for example, only around ten percent of respondents answered that they had felt unsafe on their last flight. A majority of 53 percent also said that airplanes were the safest mode of transport. Rail (26 percent) and the car (11 percent) followed in terms of the feeling of safety.

Globally, commercial air traffic only returned to just under 71 percent of pre-Corona passenger volumes in 2019 last year, according to the airline association Iata. For 2023, the organization hopes to see a recovery with just over 85 percent of 2019 volumes./ceb/DP/mis