A few things. In the spirit of debate.
1. I'm not sure how accurate those stats are. According to this, Qantas had less flights since 1970 than Air New Zealand. Not sure i believe that.
2. On the routes we're talking about, we're not comparing to the airlines you mention. We're comparing to Qantas (zero), Jetstar (not listed but zero) and virgin (not listed but zero)
3. Let's say the stats are accurate, then I say a rate of 2.53 is a lot worse than Air NZ (0.74 - skewed by a single accident - Mt Erebus in 1979); Malaysia (0.92), Cathay (1.45), Singapore (1.5) and Thai (1.60). I certainly would be avoiding many of the others on the Asia Pac list.
4. We should be comparing carriers operating in the same region (as weather, traffic etc are all factors in accident rates). Hence why i've listed local carriers in #3.
5. Past performance is not necessarily an indicator of future performance (we've all seen that on the stock market, amongst other examples).
The reservation I have (that would seem shared by others, but definitely not all, on this forum), is that the level of risk is above that acceptable (particularly in light of other reasonable options), and that
is based on past performance (rightly or worngly), but also an assessment (rightly or wrongly) on how the airline has reacted to past events and my perception of their culture, maintenance and staffing procedures / expections.
Edit:
6. Not sure if we should measure by flight numbers (cycles) or by hours. Or a combo of both probably.
