Where should you sit next time you fly?
Did you ever come to the mind of boarding a plane with the anguish that it was going to crash? In fact, and despite air crash very publicized in recent years, aircraft remains the safest means of transport in the world. But if you still had doubts, then this might interest you. Statistics show that central seats in the rear of an aircraft historically have the highest survival rates.
This is based on a study of aircraft accidents over the last 35 years. The magazine TIME used the FAA database ( Federal Aviation Administration ) to search for aircraft accidents with both victims and survivors. Among them, 17 had traces of seating plans that could be analyzed. The oldest accident that entered these criteria was 1985, and the most recent in 2000.
The analysis revealed that third-party seats in the rear of the aircraft had a mortality rate of 32%, compared to 39% for the central third party and 38% for the front third.
Looking closer to the position of each row, it was found that the mid-seat at the rear of the aircraft had the best results (death rate of 28%). The worst seats were located on the wing in the central third of the carlingue (death rate of 44%).
After an accident, survivors sitting near an emergency exit are more likely to get out alive, according to a study published in 2008 by the University of Greenwich, which focused on the use of emergency exits following an air crash.
Not really safer seat than another
Of course, the “probability” of dying in an aircraft accident is less likely to result in the location where you sit and more relevant to the circumstances surrounding the accident. If the tail of the aircraft has the greatest impact, passengers in the middle or front of the aircraft may be better off than those sitting in the rear. But the TIME magazine explains that survival was random in several cases, the passengers who died were irregularly dispersed between the survivors. For this reason, the FAA and other aviation safety experts indicate that there is not really a “safe” seat on an aircraft.
But one thing is certain: stealing is very safe, and it has been more and more for the last few decades. This is especially true when compared to other means of transport. The chances of losing life in a car accident are 1 out of 112 in a lifetime. As a pedestrian, the chances are 1 in 700 and on a motorcycle, they are 1 in 900. But on an airplane, the chances of dying in your entire life fall to only 1 in 8000 on average.
A full-scale test conducted in 2012
To study an air crash and the consequences on passengers, an experiment was conducted in 2012 in a Mexican desert with a 727 boeing. A voluntary crash that confirmed that the back of the aircraft is the most “safe”, although everything depends on the type of crash. Here's the video of this crash:
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