AirlineRatings.com has cautioned travelers to steer clear of the LET410, Antonov An-12, Ilyushin Il-76, and CASA 212 aircraft which have the worst crash rate over the past 10 years.

AirlineRatings.com which rates 425 airlines for both safety and product has completed a comprehensive analysis of the crash records of 55 different aircraft in active service.

Editor Geoffrey Thomas said that AirlineRatings.com had only looked at the records for the last ten years as they were relevant to today’s travelers.

“The crash rates of aircraft that dominated the 1970s and 1980s but are no longer in passenger service are irrelevant today,” said Mr Thomas. “We only looked at aircraft that are carrying passengers in 2013.”

“We have used the Boeing database which is an industry standard and supplemented that with our own records and those of Aviation-Safety.net and Ascend,” he said.

The survey also ignores piston-powered planes and those smaller aircraft used mainly for charter work. “Clearly flying on pure jet powered aircraft is far safer as seven out of the ten aircraft with bad crash rates are turboprops.”

“Aircraft such as the 777, A380, A340, 717 and 787 have never had a fatality,” said Mr Thomas.

However, Mr Thomas said that while some aircraft such as the Twin-Otter have a high crash rate it did not mean that it is a dangerous aircraft.

“It’s actually a great aircraft but you have to look also at which airline is operating them and how and where they are flying,” said Mr Thomas.

“For instance operating into mountainous regions in a third world country with limited navigation aids can be dangerous.”