Australian carrier Qantas has been named the world's safest airline for 2020, according to AirlineRatings, an airline safety and product rating review website.

Singapore Airlines (SIA) was ranked sixth, after Air New Zealand, EVA Air, Etihad and Qatar Airways.

Emirates, Alaska Airlines, Cathay Pacific Airways and Virgin Australia rounded up the rest of the top 10 list.

2019 still safe despite 737 MAX accidents

The site also stated that 2019 remained one of the safest ever for commercial aviation, despite the high-profile Boeing 737 MAX accidents involving Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines.

The number of overall fatalities in 2019 was 283, which is below the five-year average of 480 fatalities.

The Aviation Safety Network said that 2019 was the seventh safest year in terms of the number of accidents, and the third safest based on number of fatalities.

The safest year in aviation history was 2017, with only 10 accidents and 44 fatalities.

How are airlines evaluated for safety?

AirlineRatings takes into account a variety of factors when evaluating safety, including audits from aviation industry bodies, government audits, crash and serious incident records from the airlines, profitability, safety initiatives and fleet age.

Qantas is most known for its impeccable flight safety history, after Dustin Hoffman's character Ray in the 1988 movie Rainman declared that Qantas is the only airline in the world that had never crashed.

This is technically not true, as Qantas did lose several aircraft in its early days, with its most recent crash in 1951, killing three people.

However, the Australian carrier managed to stay free of fatalities for the next 68 years, proving that its safety accolades were no flukes.

In comparison, SIA's most recent and only flight crash happened in 2000, when a Boeing 747-400 took off from the wrong runway in Chiang Kai-shek International Airport -- now Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.

Qantas was also named the world's safest airline in 2019, and held the title between 2014 to 2017 as well, according to CNN.

In 2018, Qantas missed out on the opportunity to retain its crown as AirlineRatings could not find a clear winner, so it awarded the accolade jointly to the top 20 airlines.

Top image from Qantas.