Ryanair ranks above British Airways and easyJet in new safety study

Budget airlines have taken three of the top five places in a new safety index of 20 European carriers, built on accident records from 2016 to 2025. The index’s authors say a low place doesn’t make an airline unsafe, but Jet2 and Vueling finishing near the bottom will still raise eyebrows on Spain routes.

Three of the top five are budget airlines 

Greek carrier Aegean Airlines came out on top of the 2026 European Airline Safety Index with a score of 89 out of 100, with Ryanair close behind on 86 and Austrian Airlines third on 85.5. 

Norwegian (85) and SunExpress (84.5) complete the top five, which means three of the five best-scoring airlines are low-cost carriers. Ryanair dropped just two points on its accident record, for two non-fatal accidents in 2023.

Further down, British Airways shares sixth place with Air France and Iberia on 83.5, as easyJet finishes 12th on 82.

“Many travellers assume that a cheaper ticket means accepting more safety risk, but the data doesn’t support this,” Anton Radchenko, chief executive of AirAdvisor, told Euronews Travel. He added that the price of a ticket tells you “very little about how safe an airline is”.

Accident records count for 40 per cent of the score

The index was put together by AirAdvisor, a company that helps passengers claim compensation for delayed and cancelled flights. It compared the 10 largest low-cost and 10 largest traditional airlines in Europe, picked by how many flights they operated in 2025 according to Eurocontrol (Europe’s air traffic management body).

Each airline was scored across six areas. Its accident history from 2016 to 2025, taken from the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) annual safety reports, makes up 40 per cent of the total points. Certification and audits count for 20 per cent, safety management systems (the internal reporting and flight-data checks airlines run day to day) for 15 per cent, then fleet age and pilot training for 10 per cent each and financial stability for the last 5 per cent.

That mix explains a few surprises too. British Airways, SAS and Eurowings all had perfect accident records over the decade, but still finished outside the top five once the other factors were added in.

Why a lower place doesn’t mean an unsafe airline

So it’s worth being clear on what the ranking can and can’t tell you. AirAdvisor itself said the index is “comparative and should not be read as a measure of whether any individual airline is safe or unsafe”, and it describes serious accidents in European commercial aviation as exceptionally rare.

Much of the scoring outside the accident record also relies on publicly available regulatory and company information rather than independent inspections, and the company hasn’t published a full category-by-category breakdown for every airline.

It’s also only 20 airlines being analysed, so carriers including Air Europa, TUI and Volotea, which fly plenty of Spain routes, weren’t assessed at all.

Where Jet2 and Vueling landed

The bottom of the table will catch the eye of anyone booked on a Spain route this winter. Barcelona-based Vueling, part of the same group as Iberia and British Airways, finished 17th on 77, with Jet2 18th on 73. SWISS was 19th on 72.5 and Turkish low-cost airline Pegasus last on 64.5.

AirAdvisor didn’t explain why exactly those airlines scored lower and which factors were the lowest scorers for each. However, the overall gap between budget and traditional airlines was small, with low-cost carriers averaging 79.2 against 82.8 for the traditional ones.

Budget airlines actually did better on aircraft, averaging 7.8 out of 10 for their fleet age and technical profile against 7.1 for older companies, with Wizz Air and Pegasus both getting full marks. As Radchenko put it, an older aircraft that’s properly maintained “can continue operating safely for decades”.

Why it’s not the same list as January’s ranking 

It isn’t the first airline safety league table of the year either. In January, AirlineRatings’ annual global ranking named Turkish Airlines the safest full-service carrier in Europe and put easyJet fifth among the world’s low-cost airlines.

The two lists use different methods, so they don’t line up neatly, and neither tells you much about the disruption passengers actually run into on board. So if your usual airline sits lower than you’d hoped, AirAdvisor’s own advice is that it shouldn’t be read as unsafe, and the full table is on its website for anyone weighing up airlines before booking their next trip.