Saudi Gazette Controversy surrounds the question of whether one seat is substantially safer than another; various research teams have compared past plane accidents to determine a few tips for the choosing the “safest” seats. A comprehensive study of air accidents has come up with the statistics to prove that it's true. A seat up to five rows from an exit offers a better than even chance of escaping if there's a fire, according to researchers from the University of Greenwich commissioned by the Civil Aviation Authority. Survival: A seat near an exit is your best chance in the event of an emergency. When seated six or more rows from an exit, however, ‘the chances of perishing far outweigh those of surviving'. Whether the seat is on the aisle or not only makes a ‘marginal' amount of difference, the study shows. The scientists checked the accounts of 2,000 survivors in 105 air accidents around the world. When it comes to surviving a fire, those seated in an aisle had a ‘marginally' higher chance of surviving – at 65 per cent – than those seated by a window (58 percent). Passengers at the front of the aircraft had a 65 per cent chance of escape, while those at the rear had only a 53 per cent chance. The findings have prompted concern about the trend for airlines to charge extra for exit seats – which offer more leg room – or giving passengers the opportunity to choose their seats online. The study looked at a variety of air accidents including fires on board and crashes. One was the 1985 Manchester airport fire which claimed 55 lives on a British Air tours 737, caused by an exploding engine. The resulting fire blazed on one side of the aircraft, blocking several exits. The study found that the passengers who died were on average sitting more than double the distance from a usable exit as those who survived. A major caveat in these opinions is that they're not based on hard data about actual airline accidents. A look at real-world crash stats, however, suggests that the farther back you sit, the better your odds of survival. Passengers near the tail of a plane are about 40 percent more likely to survive a crash than those in the first few rows up front. That's the conclusion of an exclusive Popular Mechanics study that examined every commercial jet crash in the United States, since 1971 that had both fatalities and survivors. The raw data from these 20 accidents has been languishing for decades in National Transportation Safety Board files, waiting to be analyzed by anyone curious enough to look and willing to do the statistical drudgework. And drudgework it was. For several weeks, researchers pored over reports filed by the national Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) crash investigators, and studied seating charts that showed where each passenger sat and whether they lived or died, they then calculated the average fore-and-aft seating position of both survivors and fatalities for each crash. They also compared survival rates in four sections of the aircraft. Both analytical approaches clearly pointed to the same conclusion: It's safer in the back. In 11 of the 20 crashes, rear passengers clearly fared better. Only five accidents favored those sitting forward. Three were tossups, with no particular pattern of survival. In one case, seat positions could not be determined. In seven of the 11 crashes favoring back-seaters, their advantage was striking. For example, in both the 1982 Air Florida accident in Washington, D.C., and the 1972 crash of an Eastern 727 at New York's Kennedy Airport, the handful of survivors were all sitting in the last few rows. And when a United DC-8 ran out of fuel near Portland, Oregon, in 1978, all seven passengers who died were sitting in the first four rows. Oddly, the five accidents that favored front-cabin passengers all occurred between 1988 and 1992. In the 1989 United DC-10 accident in Sioux City, Iowa, for example, the majority of the 175 survivors sat ahead of the wing. There was just one crash in which passengers in the front had a pronounced survival advantage. The only two fatalities in a 1989 USAir runway accident at LaGuardia were both sitting in Row 21 in the 25-row Boeing 737-400. Where detailed seating charts were available survival rates for various parts of the passenger cabin were also calculated. Again, the trend was clear: The rear cabin (seats located behind the trailing edge of the wing) had the highest average survival rate at 69 percent. The over wing section had a 56 percent survival rate, as did the coach section ahead of the wing. First/business-class sections (or in all-coach planes, the front 15 percent) had an average survival rate of just 49 percent. At the Back “Popular Mechanics” reports that the seats in an airplane's rear cabin are statistically safer than those over the wings or near the nose of the plane. The research supporting their conclusions compared the survival rates of 20 plane crashes; in 11 of the accidents, the rear passengers fared much better than the others. In five crashes, those seated at the front had a better chance of survival and in the remaining cases, the fatality rate was comparable. The report calculated an overall survival rate of 69 percent in the rear cabin, versus 56 percent over the wing or ahead of the wing and 49 percent in business or first class. On An Aisle The University of Greenwich has established that aisle seats are safer than window or center seats, according to the Daily Mail and the Sunday Times. By opting for an aisle seat instead of a window, the survival rate leaps from 58 percent to 64 percent. The research used statistics from 105 accidents from around the world and compiled the reports of more than 2000 accident survivors. Near An Exit Also, the University of Greenwich study found that sitting near an exit is even more important than sitting by the aisle. The study recommends sitting within five rows of an exit, as chances of survival dramatically reduce at a distance of six rows or more. The proximity to an exit is of even greater importance than sitting toward the front or back of the plane, according to the University of Greenwich. In fact, the study even contradicts the findings from “Popular Mechanics'” research; the over-wing area, all situated within five rows of an exit, is even safer than the back of the plane, according to the University of Greenwich study. Additional Considerations For every voice claiming that one seat is safer than another, you'll find another expert asserting just the opposite. Todd Curtis, aviation safety expert and author of “Understanding Aviation Safety Data,” says plane accidents happen under such varied circumstances that it's impossible to bet on the safest seat. A better way to improve your chances of survival is by booking direct flights. Most crashes happen during take off or descent, so limiting the number of landings will lower your chances of experiencing an accident. However, the National Transportation Safety Board shows that most accident have few fatalities. All planes have to pass a test to show they can be emptied in 90 seconds. In tests, cabin crew assist passengers with their exits. But the report said the experimental situations do not take into account the ‘social bonds' between passengers – adults tend to help children escape, for example. And exits may be unusable or blocked, and some of the cabin crew may have died during the accident. Passengers were more likely to comply with the cabin crew's instructions in a test than in an emergency. Crew are trained to prevent queues forming around an emergency exit by directing passengers to a less congested escape route. But the study said: ‘In real emergency situations, where passengers may have a choice of directions in which to escape, they may ultimately ignore crew commands and attempt to use their nearest exit.' __
