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

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the law-of-averages dept.

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."

45 of 454 comments (clear)

  1. It's safer in the back and... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    you're by the bathrooms and you can watch any hottie walk back to her seat.

    1. Re:It's safer in the back and... by ruiner13 · · Score: 4, Funny

      you're by the bathrooms and you can watch any hottie walk back to her seat. Yeah, and you can also smell the ripe dookie she just dropped in the can as she saunters on down the aisle.
      --

      today is spelling optional day.

    2. Re:It's safer in the back and... by kharchenko · · Score: 5, Funny

      here's an obligatory feedback on the seat you're suggesting :)

    3. Re:It's safer in the back and... by Climate+Shill · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is absurd to concern oneself with anyway since the death rate for commercial air travel is around 0.14 per billion miles. The death rate for automobile travel is 11,350% higher.

      If I die, the fact that I've travelled a large distance in the process will hardly be much of a consolation.

      Replacing deaths/mile by deaths/hour gives figures far less different.

    4. Re:It's safer in the back and... by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 4, Funny

      During the crash you will be covered with turds and blue water before being incinerated with jet fuel. Which is about as dignified as the rest of air travel these days.

    5. Re:It's safer in the back and... by Dun+Malg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Replacing deaths/mile by deaths/hour gives figures far less different.

      .87 deaths per billion passenger-miles for airplane vs 11.7 for automobile. Still more than an order of magnitude greater, and people normally cover far more miles by car than by air in their lives.

      But even at that, statistics are largely irrelevant on an individual scale. Statistically, you can say that every time someone flies on a plane, they lose 15 minutes off their life. This is, however, only true in the aggregate, as the loss is not spread across all passengers, but rather concentrated in those rare instances when 150 people lose an average of 30-odd years each all at once because they died in a plane crash.
      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
    6. Re:It's safer in the back and... by hahiss · · Score: 3, Funny

      This is absurd to concern oneself with anyway since the death rate for commercial air travel is around 0.14 per billion miles. The death rate for automobile travel is 11,350% higher. Well, duh, that's why I drive sitting in the back seat of my car.
      --
      "Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." - H.L. Mencken
  2. If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Insightful

    it's that if your time has come there's nothing you can do.

    Which is good, cause it fits in nicely with a bit of wisdom that a lot of people should take to heart:

    don't worry about stuff you have no control over.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
    1. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by Deadstick · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, well, if your airplane gets in trouble you'd better hope the pilot doesn't believe that.

      rj

    2. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by qazsedcft · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But the pilot does have control over the plane.

      Now back to the actual point. The GP wrote "if your time has come". This outcome is not determinable in advance. If you die in a crash then your time has come. If you survive then your time has not come. This is kind of like Schrodinger's cat.

  3. Sit in the rear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Rarely does an airplane back into the side of a mountain.

    1. Re:Sit in the rear by kryten_nl · · Score: 5, Funny

      Rarely does an airplane back into the side of a mountain. Because the mountains move aside when they hear that beeping sound and see the flashing lights?
      --
      For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
  4. What are the odds? by slughead · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The odds of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 5,051 in your whole lifetime. To give you some perspective, you're 5 times more likely to drown, 23 times more likely to fall to your death, and 60 times more likely to die in a car accident.

    Therefore, a far more useful article would be "How to survive driving off a seaside cliff into the ocean."

    --
    Latewire
    1. Re:What are the odds? by nerdonamotorcycle · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Indeed. You're way more likely to die as a result of the cab ride to the airport.

    2. Re:What are the odds? by kryten_nl · · Score: 4, Funny

      Therefore, a far more useful article would be "How to survive driving off a seaside cliff into the ocean."

      Install wings on your car?
      --
      For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
    3. Re:What are the odds? by dkleinsc · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I tend to view the issue with plane crashes (and terrorism, which is even more ridiculously unlikely) is the loss of control. With cars, if you're driving, you feel like you're in control of the vehicle, and by extension the situation, and thus feel safer. Even if you have a friend driving, you now have someone you (probably) trust in control of the situation.

      By contrast, in a plane, you're totally at the mercy of the pilots and air traffic controllers. You don't know them, and you know that if they screw up there's pretty close to nothing you can do about it. So even if the risk is actually less, it appears to be greater, because you are giving up control over whether you live or die.

      --
      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
    4. Re:What are the odds? by Dunbal · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Aortic dissection. This is what kills you. It's the most common, lethal deceleration injury. Of course if you're going fast enough you're simply crushed, but at "lower" speeds a sudden deceleration is enough to rotate the heart (which is fairly mobile in the chest) and rip it off the aorta (which is fixed to the posterior chest wall). The arteriovenous ligament doesn't help, either. So the aorta ruptures and you die of a cardiac tamponade. Oh and this is how Princess Diana died.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    5. Re:What are the odds? by Deadstick · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because if we flew airplanes like most people drive cars, we'd die like flies.

      rj

    6. Re:What are the odds? by pintpusher · · Score: 4, Funny

      Therefore, a far more useful article would be "How to survive driving off a seaside cliff into the ocean."

      Install wings on your car? and then climb to the back seat on the way down...
      --
      man, I feel like mold.
    7. Re:What are the odds? by joseph449008 · · Score: 5, Funny

      No, I think it has to do with crashing down from about an altitude of 30,000 feet.

    8. Re:What are the odds? by dal20402 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      PItch motions are usually pretty gentle in airliners. Roll motions can be more severe, especially in widebodies. Sit closer to the centerline. On a one-aisle plane, sit in an aisle seat; on a two-aisle plane, sit in the middle bank of seats (a center seat is best). That said, sitting close to the wing isn't a bad idea either.

    9. Re:What are the odds? by dal20402 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There are no parachutes on airliners for the following reasons:

      1. Parachutes are heavy, so a plane equipped with them could carry less cargo or passengers and ticket prices would go up.

      2. Parachutes are very complex to pack, and would have to be unpacked, inspected, and repacked at regular maintenance intervals, at considerable expense (not to mention increased time out of service for the plane).

      3. If the plane is high enough that parachutes will be of any use, it's impossible to open most exit doors as pressure seals them against the inside of the fuselage.

      4. Only a tiny fraction of passengers would understand how to use parachutes. When all the others slam into the ground at terminal velocity -- especially if the plane somehow survives -- it's a brave new world of stupendously huge liability for the airline.

    10. Re:What are the odds? by tomhudson · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "Aortic dissection. This is what kills you. It's the most common, lethal deceleration injury. Of course if you're going fast enough you're simply crushed, but at "lower" speeds a sudden deceleration is enough to rotate the heart (which is fairly mobile in the chest) and rip it off the aorta (which is fixed to the posterior chest wall). The arteriovenous ligament doesn't help, either. So the aorta ruptures and you die of a cardiac tamponade. Oh and this is how Princess Diana died."

      They wanted to install seats facing backwards in airplanes specifically to reduce the deaths from the initial crash. Howver, they determined that the flying public wouldn't accept rear-facing seats. Considering all the BS the flying public puts up with nowadyas, maybe its time to float the idea again.

      Oh, another Princess Di joke - "I heard Princess Di was on the radio... And the dash. And the seat ..."

    11. Re:What are the odds? by Poromenos1 · · Score: 3, Funny

      That does it. I'm getting my heart nailed in place!

      --
      Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
    12. Re:What are the odds? by Poromenos1 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Just about no airplane crashes from that height.

      That's true, most airplanes crash on the ground.
      --
      Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
    13. Re:What are the odds? by gerardrj · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
    14. Re:What are the odds? by nbauman · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Aortic dissection. This is what kills you. It's the most common, lethal deceleration injury. Of course if you're going fast enough you're simply crushed, but at "lower" speeds a sudden deceleration is enough to rotate the heart (which is fairly mobile in the chest) and rip it off the aorta (which is fixed to the posterior chest wall). The arteriovenous ligament doesn't help, either. So the aorta ruptures and you die of a cardiac tamponade. Oh and this is how Princess Diana died.

      That's a good story. I wonder if it's true.

      By a strange coincidence (only on Slashdot), I just went to a conference on aortic surgery. And I used to edit the Stapp Car Crash Conference Proceedings in the 1970s (great series) and I remember at least one article on aortic damage.

      Bottom line: Most of the aortic damage in automobile collisions occurs to people who weren't wearing their seat belts. Those lap and shoulder belts (which the U.S. auto companies refused to install until 1967) really work well. You can thank Ralph Nader for saving about 25,000 lives a year. The auto companies also made steering columns that were positioned exactly right and strong enough to impale the driver's chest, often with a heart puncture. Thanks to Ralph Nader, they replaced them with a collapsable steering column around 1967.

      Let's see the latest stuff, um, http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/332/6/356 Smith MD et al, Transesophageal Echocardiography in the Diagnosis of Traumatic Rupture of the Aorta, N Engl J Med 1995 332:356-362. (Well worth reading; great X-rays.) 7 were not restrained, 2 were. Smith says:

      Blunt chest trauma commonly results from motor vehicle accidents in which the sternum of an unrestrained driver strikes the steering wheel at impact.5 Rupture of the aorta has been estimated to account for up to 18 percent of deaths in motor vehicle accidents.19 As a result of rapid deceleration of the thorax and compression of the diaphragm, the aorta is subjected to extreme torque and compression at points of attachment: the sinuses of Valsalva, the isthmus, and the diaphragm.20 With compression of the mediastinum, the heart may be displaced into the right or left side of the chest, producing further stress at these points. The severe aortic-wall stress from intraluminal hypertension results in rupture through the intima, often continuing into the media and adventitial layers. Complete rupture usually results in death at the scene, whereas patients with a contained hematoma may survive to reach the hospital.

      Whaddya know, the poster has a point. Aortic trauma is still a major cause of automobile fatalties, usually but not always when people aren't wearing seat belts (Diana wasn't).

      But wait, Smith also says,

      Thirteen patients (14.0 percent) ultimately died during hospitalization as a result of associated injuries, but no deaths were related to aortic injury (Table 1). The four deaths in the group with aortic injury were due to multiorgan-system failure (two patients), acute myocardial infarction (one patient), and hemorrhage from pelvic fracture (one patient).

      I forget how to do the equations, but as I recall when a car collides against a solid barrier at 50mph, it has about 50 inches of crush space in which to come to a halt, and that comes to about 50g, which everybody told me is survivable. (One of you young whippersnappers can check my numbers.) John Paul Stapp tested it himself on his rocket sled and lived. But if you subjected 100 people to 50g, I don't know how many of them would get aortic rupture.

      The other major cause of death (mostly to people who aren't wearing seat belts) is head injury. Thanks to Ralph Nader, those windshields are carefully designed with plastic laminate that has just the right elasticity to bring a passenger's head to a stop with low enough force to avoid breaking his

    15. Re:What are the odds? by Alsee · · Score: 3, Funny

      the aorta ruptures and you die of a cardiac tamponade

      Speaking as a guy, tamponade sounds like a really embarrassing way to die.

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
    16. Re:What are the odds? by Fastolfe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      While I agree that those four issues are relatively weak (but still important when costing solutions for the problem), the biggest problem with parachutes is that exceedingly few air accidents occur in a manner that allows parachutes to be useful. If you suffer a catastrophic failure mid-flight, it's unlikely that you're going to have time to get parachutes on everyone and get them all out the door, even assuming the plane is continuing to fly straight and level (imagine trying to accomplish this while you're spiraling toward the ground). If you do have time to do all of that, then the plane really isn't in that bad of shape and it's more likely that the landing will be safer, even if it's unpowered with some critical systems failed, than throwing everyone out the door to fend for themselves.

      For accidents that occur during landing or just after take-off, even ignoring the time factor, your altitude is far too low to safely bail out.

      There could be some scenarios where parachutes would save lives, and the crew would be in a position to know that parachutes would be safer than trying to land, but I rather suspect these scenarios are going to be rare.

      At some point you have to ask yourself if the odds of this solution saving lives justify the enormous costs of implementing it.

  5. Reminds me of... by rundstykke · · Score: 5, Funny

    ..an entertaining read I bumped into a couple of months back, describing how to survive a freefall from 35'000 feet...

    http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/carkeet.html


    /Rundstykke

    1. Re:Reminds me of... by Elemenope · · Score: 3, Funny

      It's funny. Laugh.

      --
      All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
  6. Worry about something else by Kohath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you're really worried about a plane crash, I suggest staying home. Maybe don't get out of bed at all.

    Watching and reading the news is your real problem. Things that happen on the news are extremely unlikely to happen to you. That's why you never see headlines like "Jill Larson Goes to the Market. Buys Coffee. (Subtitle: Coffee purchase exceeds analysts' expectations by 100%)"

    That's all. I have to go to the market. But I'm not buying coffee, so no commercial airliners will crash today.

  7. BBC already did this... by Joce640k · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    No sig today...
  8. Not on Oceanic 815... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... where all but one of the survivors from the tail section so far as been kidnapped or murdered.

  9. Excuse me... by AsmCoder8088 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Excuse me... by fermion · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Yeah, and this is likely the least of their troubles. The data was basically 50/50, and they did not show that 5% difference was significant.

      Given thier analysis, and what often happens in a plane crash, this is what I think might be a more reasonable conclusion.

      In the event of a passenger jet crash, probability is that everyone will die. If everyone does not die, the statistics still favor a majority of the passengers being killed in the crash.

      The analysis in the paper appears to show a slightly higher probability of survival in the back of the plane, but did not show that the level was statistically significant. In the other cases the was not a clear effect of seat position, and often the back of the plane appeared to be preferentially fatal.

      So, in summary, the passenger jet is not likely to crash. In the few cases where a crash does occur, and fatalities ensue, then there are not, on average, going to be many survivors. In the extremely rare case that jet crashes and there are survivors, a passenger may be safer up back, unless it is one of those cases where you are safe in front. Therefore, the best thing to do is sit somewhere in the middle.

      --
      "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
  10. Is it expensive by WormholeFiend · · Score: 3, Funny

    to get a seat inside the black box?

  11. Best way to survice a crash... by niceone · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...just reboot and you should be fine.

    --
    ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
  12. excellent by JustNiz · · Score: 3, Funny

    All those arrogant dicks in first class get to die first.

  13. Re:Anti-EU much ? by funwithBSD · · Score: 3, Informative

    You are a little over sensitive.

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

    --
    Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
  14. Don't sit in the back! by Per+Wigren · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's where the snakes are!

    --
    My other account has a 3-digit UID.
  15. First Class by 15Bit · · Score: 3, Funny

    As a regular flier in cattle-class, i'd just like to say that its nice to see first class passengers getting the preferential treatment they deserve. First on, first off and first into the mountainside...

  16. I want to die like my grandfather... by microcars · · Score: 4, Funny
    peacefully in his sleep

    not like the passengers in his car, screaming and yelling

    --
    I like microcars
  17. Sitting in back is counterproductive by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 4, Interesting
    According to this site, if you fly every day, you'd get killed once every 19,000 years. That's about a 1 in 7 million odds per flight, which sounds about right.

    When you sit in the back, it takes longer to get off of the plane because you have to wait for all the bozos in front of you to fumble for their personal belongings. I'd say that a conservative estimate is an average of 5 extra minutes. So before your first expected crash, you'd waste 5 * 7,000,000 minutes, or 66 solid years waiting at the back of planes. So to save each life, you're essentially using up an entire lifetime standing hunched over watching old codgers wrestle with their suitcases. (It's actually much worse than that, because only a fraction of fatal crashes even have a difference in outcome between the front and the back. A lot of times, everybody dies and sitting in the back doesn't help anyway.)

  18. /If/ you die? by ishmaelflood · · Score: 3, Funny

    I've got some bad news for you, unless you are a bacterium. It is WHEN you die, not IF.