MYTH: It Doesn’t Matter Where You Sit
“It’s like a lottery to pick your seat.”
-Nora Marshall, passenger survival expert, National Transportation Safety Board“One seat is as safe as the other.”
-Boeing Web site“It’s an age-old question. There’s just no way to say.”
-Federal Aviation Administration spokesman“There is no safest seat.”
-airsafe.comREALITY: It’s Safer In the Back.
The funny thing about all those expert opinions: They’re not really 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.
