Ryanair — where a passenger recently got partly sucked out a window — earns top marks for safety

“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.”

Indeed, with regards to the Ryanair incident, a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report found that the aircraft’s fan blades had undergone routine ultrasonic inspections in May and had passed without any findings. The investigation is ongoing.

While budget airlines might cut out the frills of travel — like in-flight meals or a few extra inches of legroom — all carriers operate under the same safety standards.

Yet, a black swan event — like a hijacking, plane crash or being sucked out of a window — may cause some people to think twice about boarding a plane again. But it doesn’t mean they should stop flying altogether.

Flying is still one of the safest modes of travel. In 2025, 38.7 million flights took place around the world. Of those, there were eight fatal accidents, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

“Per mile travelled, driving is roughly 180 times more dangerous than flying,” according to an article in AirAdvisor. “The U.S. National Safety Council puts the lifetime odds of dying as an airline passenger as ‘too small to calculate,’ while your lifetime odds of dying in a car crash sit at about 1 in 95.”