You might easily agree that air travel remains as the safest type of transportation to take. But if you are often travelling by air, it may already have crossed your mind that there could be particular seats which are more likely to be safer than the rest in case your plane gets into trouble.
In an article recently published by the Huffington Post, a spokesperson from the US Aviation Administration asserted that there is no safest seat in a plane. “Each incident or crash is unique. Impact could come from a nosedive, a water landing, or a runway collision,” Alison Duquette said.
Even the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) does not maintain any seat-related statistics. The agency claims that it has not even conducted studies to identify the safest plane seats.
But in 2007, science and technology magazine Popular Mechanics identified the possible safest seats in every flight, based on NTSB records of commercial plane crashes in the U.S. since 1971. Its findings are quickly summarized in this illustration from the Huffington Post:
In 2015, a research by Time magazine tabulated mortality rates identified per group of seats in a plane, based on analysis of 17 accidents since 1985. This illustration from the Huffington Post summarizes the findings:
No one wants to make generalizations from these information. But these may somehow give you an idea of where you could be possibly safer the next time you book a flight. And always have your presence of mind up whenever taking any form of transportation, whether by air, land, or sea.