Greece's Aegean Airlines has come out on top of a new decade-spanning safety ranking of Europe's biggest airlines, edging out Ryanair and Austrian Airlines for first place.
The 2026 European Airline Safety Index, compiled by compensation company AirAdvisor, scored 20 major carriers out of 100 using ten years of data (2016 to 2025). Six categories fed into the score: safety record (worth 40%), certification and audit history (20%), operational safety systems (15%), fleet age (10%), pilot training (10%) and financial stability (5%).
Aegean finished with 89/100, having recorded no qualifying accidents across the entire period and taking a perfect 40/40 on safety record. Ryanair followed on 86, with Austrian Airlines just behind on 85.5. Norwegian and SunExpress completed the top five. Interestingly, a flawless safety record alone didn't guarantee a top spot — British Airways, SAS and Eurowings also scored 40/40 on that measure but landed outside the top five because the other categories dragged their overall totals down. British Airways ended up joint sixth with Air France and Iberia on 83.5, while Turkish Airlines and Lufthansa tied for ninth on 83.
At the other end of the table, SWISS came 19th with 72.5 and Turkish low-cost carrier Pegasus propped up the list on 64.5. Jet2 (73rd... well, 18th on 73 points) and Vueling (77) also finished low.
The more useful takeaway for travellers is the budget-versus-full-service comparison. Low-cost airlines averaged 79.2 out of 100, only 3.6 points behind mainline carriers on 82.8 — and three of the top five were budget airlines. Low-cost carriers actually beat legacy airlines on fleet age, scoring 7.8/10 against 7.1, thanks to younger aircraft; Wizz Air and Pegasus both scored a full 10/10 in that category. AirAdvisor's CEO Anton Radchenko put it plainly: ticket price tells you very little about how safe an airline is, and accident records between the two groups are very similar.
Worth keeping in mind: the index is explicitly comparative. AirAdvisor stresses it shouldn't be read as a verdict on whether any single airline is safe or unsafe — a well-maintained older aircraft can fly safely for decades, and fleet youth is an efficiency advantage rather than a safety guarantee.
For anyone booking a European trip this year, the practical upshot is reassuring: 20 of the continent's largest airlines have scored within a fairly tight band on a decade of safety data, so price and schedule can realistically drive your choice more than safety anxiety. That said, if you like backing the numbers, Aegean's decade-long clean sheet makes it the standout performer of the period, and the top ten offers a solid mix of both flag carriers and low-cost options from Athens to Vienna to Oslo.
