When choosing a seat on a flight, we look above all for comfort, our preference, by window or aisle, and it is normal to choose, let’s do it from the middle forward.
But is it the safest? Doug Drury is Professor of Aviation at CQUniversity in Australia, and has written an article in The Conversation where he explains the details on this matter.
“Rarely do we book a flight hoping to get one of the middle seats in the last row,” says Drury, but in reality, “these seats are statistically the safest on an airplane.”
Drury recalls that “an investigation of Time who analyzed 35 years of plane crash data found that the middle rear seats of an airplane had the lowest fatality rate: 28%, compared to 44% for center aisle seats.”
“This logically makes sense as well. Sitting next to an exit row will always give you the quickest exit in an emergency, as long as there’s no fire on that side. But the wings of an airplane store fuelso this disqualifies middle exit rows as the safest row option,” he continues.
“At the same time, being closer to the front means that you will be hit before those behind, which leaves us with the last output row. As for why middle seats are safer than window or aisle seats, that’s, unsurprisingly, because of the cushioning that having people on either side provides.”