In the newly released European Airline Safety Index, AirAdvisor has ranked the top 20 European airlines based on a decade’s worth of research data.

The 2026 European Airline Safety Index assessed the 10 largest eligible low-cost and 10 largest eligible mainline carriers operating in Europe, based on 2025 flight volumes reported by EUROCONTROL, Euronews reports.

Each airline was scored out of 100 across six categories:

40 percent: safety record, based on accidents published in the IATA Safety Report between 2016 and 2025 inclusive

20 percent: certification and audit, including audit history and International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) data on the effectiveness of national aviation oversight

15 percent: operational safety systems

10 percent: fleet age and technical profile

10 percent: pilot training

5 percent: financial stability

Aegean tops safety rankings

In the final rankings, Greek flag carrier Aegean scored 89/100 with no qualifying accidents in the 10-year period, ahead of Ryanair (86/100) and Austrian Airlines (85.5/100).

Aegean achieved a perfect 40/40 for its safety record and also scored highly on operational safety (13/15), fleet (9/10) and financial stability (5/5).

A perfect safety record alone “was not enough to reach the top”, said AirAdvisor. “British Airways, SAS and Eurowings also scored 40/40 in that category but finished outside the top five, because the index weighs six factors together.”

AirAdvisor stressed that the index is “comparative and should not be read as a measure of whether any individual airline is safe or unsafe.”

Low-cost airlines perform strongly

Three of the top five airlines were low-cost carriers: Ryanair (second), Norwegian (fourth) and SunExpress (fifth). Low-cost airlines averaged a score of 79.2/100, compared with 82.8/100 for mainline carriers, representing a gap of 3.6 points.

“Many travellers assume that a cheaper ticket means accepting more safety risk, but the data doesn’t support this,” Anton Radchenko, CEO of AirAdvisor, told Euronews Travel.

“Low-cost and mainline airlines have very similar accident records, and their safety management systems scored the same on average. In other words, the price of a ticket tells you very little about how safe an airline is.”

The 2026 European Airline Safety Index

Scored out of 100, here’s how the 20 major European airlines ranked:

1. Aegean Airlines: 89/100

2. Ryanair: 86/100

3. Austrian Airlines: 85.5/100

4. Norwegian: 85/100

5. SunExpress: 84.5/100

=6. Air France: 83.5/100

=6. British Airways: 83.5/100

=6. Iberia: 83.5/100

=7. Turkish Airlines: 83/100

=7. Lufthansa: 83/100

8. KLM: 82.5/100

9. easyJet: 82/100

=10. Eurowings: 81.5/100

=10. SAS: 81.5/100

11. Wizz Air: 79.5/100

12. Transavia: 79/100

13. Vueling: 77/100

14. Jet2: 73/100

15. SWISS: 72.5/100

16. Pegasus Airlines: 64.5/100

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