Online thirst for airline safety records

The crash-landing at London Heathrow last week has - predictably - sent the consumer travel press and mainstream media into a frenzy over the safety records of our favourite airlines.

For those eager to check out such detail before they fly, The Guardian has today pointed readers to a great site - Airsafe.com - which notes in incredible detail the safety records of the world's airlines, outlining fatalities and crashes as well as the performance of individual aircraft.

It's fascinating reading.

• "No-fatals" - airlines with a seemingly unblemished safety record. Europe, North America, Africa and Middle East, Asia and Australasia.
• The last 15 crashes.
• British Airways safety record.
• Crashes by aircraft type.
• Multimedia!
  

But is this stuff popular? Alexa gives the site a ranking of around 230,000 across the web, but much higher in the US (102,000) and the UK (104,000).

In turn 42% of its traffic comes from the US, 7% from the UK - although this is bound to increase following last week's events.

But for a site that has fantastic linking throughout, it's presence on Google, for example, is not good.

Indeed the two best performing sites for the phrase "airline safety record" are Placecrashinfo.com and Airline-Safety-Records.com - both of which are rather out of date with their data.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

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