A viewer wrote to ask me "What's the best (meaning safest) place to sit on a plane?"
That's a very good question given the number of airplane crashes we've had so far in 2025.
That's far more crashes than we've had in recent years. This is due to a number of reasons:
-
Corporate greed exceeding their concern for passenger safety
-
Insufficient time for maintenance crews to perform maintenance correctly
-
Planes becoming increasingly computerized and faults in the computerized programs
-
Increased computerization resulting in miles more wiring that can cause on board fires
-
Overloaded airports, air traffic controllers and aircraft control systems
-
Airlines hiring pilots and crew who are not qualified to be flying
-
Governments using commercial airlines as political weapons
While statistically speaking the diagram below may be accurate, it's not completely accurate.
The simple answer is there is no safe place to sit on an airplane. Who survives and crash and who doesn't depends on 3 factors:
-
What caused the crash to begin with
-
What position the plane was in when it impacted the ground, water, mountain or whatever
-
The speed the plane was traveling on impact
The place I would never sit in a plane is the front section. In most crashes, the plane is in an uncontrolled descent, traveling hundreds of miles per hour - which means the part of the plane that will impact first is the nose and front section of the plane, demolishing that section of the plane and likely, everyone in it.
Another place I wouldn't sit in a plane is near or next to the wings. Planes carry tons of highly, highly flammable aviation fuel in the wings of the plane. Essentially, you're sitting near or next to one giant bomb that in all probability is going to explode on impact unless the pilot was able to dump fuel before the crash.
I always reserved a seat in the tail section of the plane as near to an emergency exit as possible. In many crashes, the tail section survives intact because it's normally the last section of the plane to impact. But again, this depends on the speed the plane was traveling upon impact.
Another reason I'd choose a seat in the tail section is that if a plane's cargo load is not properly balanced, the flight crew will move passengers in the tail section forward first to balance the load. If there are no seats available in Economy class to move them to, the flight crew will move them to First Class to balance the load.
Window seat, middle seat or aisle seat? Definitely an aisle seat. In a crisis, people are going to panic. It's inevitable. You don't want to be trapped in a window or middle seat by those panicked passengers trying to rush to get off the plane. You want to be in an aisle seat so you can beat them into the aisle and get to the nearest emergency exit door. If you're sitting in a middle or window seat you'll likely have to climb over passengers and seats to try to get to the emergency exit.
But there are far more important things to consider when flying now than what's the safest seat to sit in.
The first of them is a fire on board. Ask any flight crew what's the worst disaster that can possibly happen on a plane and they'll tell you fire. Swissair Flight 111 certainly demonstrated this when a wire in the first class entertainment system shorted out, causing a fire on board.
Flight 111 crashed, killing all on board. It was the first major crash that brought investigators' attention to how lethal a fire aboard an airline can be - and caused them to recommend to the airline industry that smoke hoods be on all planes for passengers. Corporate refused to comply. That would cost them moeny and their mind set is "Well, if we lose a few hundred passengers here and there that's just the cost of doing business."
What was discovered with subsequent fires aboard planes was that toxic fumes are released from seats and other airline parts burn. They determined passengers had 90 seconds to get off a burning plane before they died from inhaling those toxic fumes. The odds of landing a behemoth the size of a 787 or A380 anywhere within 90 seconds are slim to none.
Up to 80 percent of deaths from fire tragedies result from breathing in smoke and toxic fumes.
While I was still flying and felt it was safe to fly, I went and bought myself an oxygenated fire hood that was designed specifically for airline crews, that will give me 60 minutes of oxygen to get myself off that burning plane.
I stowed it in my carry on bag and had it next to me within reach during the flight.
It would also give me 60 minutes of oxygen in the event of a sudden decompression. The airline masks that drop down during a sudden decompression will only supply you with 12 minutes of oxygen at most.
The next most important thing any airline passenger can do to help ensure their safety is to pay attention when the flight crew is demonstrating emergency procedures. Yes, we've all heard them many times before and I'm as guilty as the next guy on this front - at least until I learned different models of different airplanes are configured differently! Which means the emergency exists are configured differently and things like where your life vest is stored may also be configured differently.
On older planes there may be only 6 emergency exits - front of plane, middle of plane, rear of plane. However, on newer airlines like the A380, the emergency exits are different and were designed to help flight crews get 873 passengers off that plane in under those critical 90 seconds.
In another incident where a plane crashed at sea, flight attendants instructed passengers not to inflate their life vests until they'd swum clear of the plane. Many passengers didn't listen and inflated their life vests while sitting in their seats. They drowned when the rising water in the sinking plane pinned them against the ceiling. Those that had paid attention to the flight crew's instructions survived.
The few minutes it takes you to pay attention to the flight crew telling you what to do in an emergency could save your life.
People panic when they don't know what to do and panic will kill you faster than anything else.
If you know what to do, you're less likely to panic.
The viewer also asked what was the best brace position to use?
The truth is even the airlines themselves can't decide on what is the best brace position to assume.
Here's the problem with all of them...depending on how many G's the airplane is pulliing when in an uncontrolled ascent, you may not be able to move to get into any brace position! If the plane is pulling a sufficient number of G's, it will render you unconscious.
This military pilot will explain G force:
If you're in an uncontrolled descent in a commercial airline, you are going to be pulling far more G's that a military fighter pilot would. - so you'll lapse into consciousness and no brace position will do you any good.
The other problem is those seats ahead of you, although designed to cushion your head from impact, have metal frames that are bolted to the floor. Upon impact you will be thrown violently forward into that seat ahead of you and there's no guarantee your head is going to hit that cushioned part of the seat ahead of you.
You could hit the metal frame, knocking yourself unconscious, giving yourself a concussion or head injury. The violence of the impact could even snap your neck, breaking it. So I don't agree with any of the airline's crash positions completely! They don't protect your neck and head sufficiently and they most certainly won't do anything to protect you from pulling enough G's to render you unconscious or from pushing you back into your seat, unable to move, Or plastering you to the ceiling of the plane depending on what kind of G's the plane is pulling.
What I'd do is:
-
Wrap my travel neck pillow around my neck BACKWARDS to help protect my neck upon impact.
-
Keep my legs as firmly planted against my own seat as possible. Do not use the seat in front of you to brace with your legs. This results in broken feet and legs.
-
Relax your body as much as possible while keeping your hands on the armrests. Ever see someone intoxicated take a fall that should have injured them but get up unscathed? That's because their bodies were relaxed when they fell. Same principle here.
-
Keep your seatbelt firmly fastened except when getting up to use the bathroom. In the event you're faced with a potential crash, tighten your seat belt as much as you can, to the point it hurts.
-
If you would have a pillow or blanket, hug that against your chest to help protect your vital organs.
There's a lot going on behind the scenes in the airline industry that most people don't know about. You cannot count on the airlines to protect you, their focus is solely on profits. You must take steps to protect yourself. This isn't to say there aren't good, conscientious pilots and flight crews out there! But Corporate greed is forcing them to do things they don't want to do. It's gotten so bad now that pilots are refusing to take off if as much as an oil pressure gauge is reading low - as recently happened with a flight bound for Hawaii, other pilots following suit. Kudos to them for taking a stand!
Safe travels!