Study reveals safest seats on flights
27.06.08
It is the question that nervous flyers ask themselves whenever they board an aircraft: where is the safest place to sit? The answer is now much clearer after a study of 105 accidents and personal accounts from almost 2000 survivors of how they managed to escape from crash landings and onboard fires, the Times reports. According to the study, for the best chance of getting out alive from a burning aircraft, people should choose an aisle seat near the front within 5 rows of an emergency exit.
Commissioned by the Civil Aviation Authority and carried out by Greenwich University, the study found that the seats with the best survival rate were in the emergency exit row and the row in front or behind it. Between 2 and 5 rows from the exit, passengers still have a better than even chance of escaping in a fire but ‘the difference between surviving and perishing is greatly reduced’.
The most dangerous seats are those six or more rows from an exit. The study says: ‘Here, the chances of perishing far outweigh those of surviving.’
Passengers sitting towards the front of the aircraft had a 65% chance of escaping a fire, while the survival rate for those at the rear was 53%. The survival rate in aisle seats was 64%, compared with 58% for other passengers.
Under international air safety regulations, aircraft must undergo an evacuation test to demonstrate that everyone on board can escape within 90 seconds when half the exits are blocked. But the newspaper reports that the study found that this test was flawed because it failed to take sufficient account of people's behaviour in an emergency. It said the tests assumed that no one on board had any ‘social bonds’ with other passengers.
Analysis of behaviour in real emergencies showed that many passengers delayed their escape to help friends or relatives. People travelling with colleagues, however, appeared to focus on their own survival and head straight for the exit.
Another flaw with the tests was that people were much more willing to comply with directions from cabin crew under experimental conditions than in real danger. The survival instinct also tended to result in selfish acts that could delay evacuation, such as people climbing over seats to jump the queue for the exit.
Robert Gifford, director of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, told the Times that the study ‘shows your choice of seat on a plane really can be a matter of life or death. Your chance of survival should not be based on your ability to pay for an emergency exit seat or to reserve your seat online.’
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