I am not a comfortable flier so I worry about safety records etc. I know zero about how planes stay in the air and have the upmost respect for pilots who take that job on. I am looking at a flight on Scoot which is the low cost airline owned by Singapore Airlines. The ratings look good etc. Another very attractive feature is that their premium seats are much more reasonably priced which is a real bonus as my partner is 6’4".
The only thing is that when I look up the ratings, Scoot does not have IOSA Certification- The IATA* Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) certification audit is an internationally recognised and accepted evaluation system designed to assess the operational management and control systems of an airline. IOSA uses internationally recognised audit principles and is designed to conduct audits in a standardised and consistent manner. Airlines are re evaluated every two years. Registering for IOSA certification and auditing is not mandatory therefore an airline that does not have IOSA certification may have either failed the IOSA audit or alternatively chosen not to participate. (Not sure how I am supposed to know whether they failed or did not participate - big difference. Also, Singapore Airlines themselves have got a IOSA Certification, but Southwest Airlines does not).
Can I assume that being part of Singapore Airlines means that they are held to the same standards and that the low cost refers to experience rather than mechanical issues? Or am I just worrying about the wrong things…thanks for any info.
Going off on a tangent here but - why don’t you read more into the physics of how airplanes fly and how they stay in the air? If you are willing to go this far into researching safety ratings, surely a little engineering knowledge can’t be too far out of reach… Besides, you might find that this May go a long way towards making you a better flier- less unknowns and all
Scoot gets 5/7. JetStar Asia is also a budget airline, flies most of the same routes and gets 7/7. Of course the actual chance of an incident is tiny on both airlines. Flying is far safer than driving in all cases.
No, you can’t make that assumption. Scoot may or may not have the same standards as Singapore.
In general you’re worrying about the wrong things. But …
Overall airline safety in China and East Asia is not nearly the sure thing it is in the US or Europe. There are lots of new carriers undergoing breakneck growth. There is lots of cultural acceptance of shortcutting on the way to riches.
The reality with airline ops is there’s a lot of safety built into the aircraft, the airports, and the overall worldwide infrastructure. As such a truly crappy slapdash operator can usually skate by for several years having lots of close calls but not crashing. Yet. Eventually the statistics will catch up with them and their actual crash history will match their long-term level of operational quality.
It’s a personal decision whether you’re comfortable (or not) in being one of those early adopters flying Slapdash Airlines before their first accident. Scoot may or may not be one of those. It’s too early to tell and there’s not a lot of published details on their internal practices. airlineratings.com mentioned above is factual, but those 5/7 or 7/7 scores are really pretty meaningless. Or said another way, 5/7 or better is proof they’re doing at least the administrative check-the-box minimums. There’s a vast amount needed beyond that to meet current first world standards.
For the most part, “low cost” airlines are achieving their low consumer prices by doing operationally different things like point-to-point trips, not typically flying a lot of routes or times that aren’t mostly full (i.e. only profitable routes), and by trying to fit more flights per day into the schedule by turning the planes around faster on the ground. They also do things like fly ONE model of plane, so they only have to train their ground crews and flight crews on one type of airplane, and they only have to contract for the parts for one type of aircraft. SWA, for example flies only Boeing 737s of various types.
They don’t skimp on the safety side of things- they just do their operations more efficiently than a traditional airline. Southwest Airlines (THE original low-cost airline) has a very good safety record- better than the more traditional airlines like cross-town rival American, for example.
Always thinking, I see you’re new around these parts, so: hi.
Also, since we’re making introductions, on most anything to do with the incomprehensibility of having pieces of metal function in the sky and the control of them from a social as well as sciency perspective, when LSLGuy posts (as above), people tend to pay greater attention–he gets paid to fly them and keep groups of people alive, as in the past he was paid by a grateful nation he flew them to get groups dead.
ETA: not the same groups, as a rule.
I used to be a much more nervous flyer than I have become now. And still made lots of long haul flights and took dodgy small carriers in India and SAmerica too! And like you I haunted airline safety reviews whenever I could find them.
But in doing that research I came upon an interesting data point. Almost always, if you go look at the original research, you’ll find a lot of qualifying asterisks, specifying different things. But one that appears in almost all is the phrase ‘correctly assembled’. This is because during maintenance parts are routinely reassembled and replaced. And, understandably, the plane manufacturer/airline doesn’t feel it should be counted against their safety record if a mechanic failed to use the correct screw!
Listing of safest planes to fly in, have the same distinction, for the exact same reason. So, unless you can spot that your plane has been correctly reassembled or not, those statistics don’t really tell you very much, in my opinion.
Airline subsidiaries/regional airlines ("partners’), at least in the U.S., generally pay their pilots (especially early on) considerably less than salaries earned by pilots at major airlines.
The thought of flying when the pilot isn’t making a whole lot more than minimum wage makes me a bit queasy.
Not really… my point was that low-cost airlines aren’t low cost because they do stuff on the cheap, like deferring maintenance, or getting used planes or something like that; it’s a business model that allows them to offer lower prices.
I’d assume Singapore’s airlines would work the same way, since I’d figure Singapore is more or less Western in regards to safety regulations, etc…
And Jackmannii, I’m talking about the Southwest Airlines, Jet Blues, Ryanair and EasyJets of the world, not the regionals like American Eagle and United Express.
