World's safest airlines announced

Planning on travelling in 2017? Before you make your decision on which airline you choose to fly with the world's safest airlines have been named. In two sets of annual rankings, Qantas and Cathay Pacific took out the number one spots.

The rankings from AirlineRatings.com have placed Qantas in the number one spot for the fourth year in a row, stating that the Flying Kangaroo's record of zero fatalities in the jet era was extraordinary.

Airline Ratings named the rest of its top 20 safest airlines in alphabetical order: Air New Zealand, Alaska Airlines, All Nippon Airways, British Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways,  Delta Air Lines, Etihad Airways, EVA Air, Finnair, Hawaiian Airlines, Japan Airlines, KLM, Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airline System, Singapore Airlines, Swiss, United Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia.

The website ranked airlines based on audits from aviation's governing bodies and lead associations; government audits; airline's crash and serious incident record; profitability and fleet age.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific carrier was named the world's safest airline for the third year in a row by Germany's Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Centre, or JACDEC. Air New Zealand followed in second place with China's Hainan Airlines rounding off the top three.

The lowest ranked airlines in the JACDEC report were China Airlines at number 60, below Avianca and Garuda Indonesia.