Safest Seat on a Plane, Or How to Survive a Crash

Ant writes "Popular Mechanics shares a short article on an exclusive look at 36 years' worth of National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reports and seating charts to determine the best way to live through a disaster in the sky. Move to the back of the Airbus."

Comments

BBC already did this...

[Joce640k]

The BBC did a documentary on this...and...

The best place is "near an exit door".

Statistically, most crashes are survivable if you can get out. The biggest impediment to getting out is the number of other people between you and the door. The ones who don't get out die of smoke/fire.

Excuse me...

[AsmCoder8088]

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.

So, they are working off of a sample size of twenty??? Not sure if I would draw too many conclusions from this dataset.

Re:Anti-EU much ?

[funwithBSD]

You are a little over sensitive.

"Move to the back of the bus." is a common phrase in America.

Re:What are the odds?

[gerardrj]

To the casual observer the doors do appear to close simply like a car door, but it's not the case. If you watch carefully when the doors move you will see the complex hinge system swings the door to the interior of the aircraft then pushes is outward against the body. When the aircraft is pressurized the door is sealed by the outward pressure. To start opening these doors you must first pull on them, to close them you end up pushing on them. For reasons I can only imagine I am unable to locate any on-line video or diagrams of how this works but in this image you can just barely make out the instructions to pull the door open then push it out.

Jumping from 37,000 feet and hundreds of MPH requires training and equipment. At that altitude the ambient air temperature is -70 fahrenheit. If the average terminal velocity of a person skydiving is 250 ft/s then you'll take about 2m30s to get to the ground without a 'chute. At 250 ft/s the wind chill is really, really significant. You've then got a choice to make (any perhaps the airline would instruct you about the best action): open the 'chute immediately after exiting the plane or wait until you are nearer the ground.
Opening the parachute early means you are certain to hit the ground slowly but maximized your exposure to very low temperatures and low oxygen with all those inherent injuries.
Opening the parachute later means more wind chill and possibly more tissue damage. Your betting that you'll be conscious to pull the rip cord. You also have much less time to perform an maneuvering to get to a "good" landing spot.

That said, given the choice of almost certain death on a severely disabled airliner or possible death by parachute I'd probably choose the parachute.