The safest seats on an aeroplane are also among the least popular

They’re often the last seats booked for flying but an examination of 35 years of airline emergencies shows they are the safest.

The safest seat on the plane is not the most expensive, research has found.

If airline seats were booked for safety rather than comfort and efficiency, the middle rear seats would be the first to be snapped up.

That’s the finding of a TIME magazine investigation that examined 35 years of airline accident data to establish the safest seats on an aircraft.

In a nutshell the back third of the plane was the safest with a 32 per cent fatality rate in emergencies, the middle third the least safe with a 39 per cent fatality rate, and the front not much better on 38 per cent.

Central Queensland University professor of aviation Doug Drury said middle rear seats were found to have the lowest fatality rate at 28 per cent.

In contrast, the fatality rate for those in the middle aisle seats was the highest at 44 per cent.

“This logically makes sense,” Professor Drury said.

“Sitting next to an exit row will always provide you with the fastest exit in the case of an emergency, granted there’s no fire on that side. But the wings of a plane store fuel so this disqualifies the middle exit rows as the safest option.”

He said sitting at the “pointy” end meant passengers would be impacted before those in the back who left the last exit row.

“As for why the middle seats are safer than the window or aisle seats, that is because of the buffer provided by having people on either side,” he said.

The research was unlikely to change the lack of popularity of middle seats, which were normally the last choice of passengers when selecting where to sit.

In fact, Virgin Australia even launched a “middle seat lottery” last year in an effort to encourage people to book the “sandwich” seat and go in the running for various prizes.

“Most people book seats for comfort such as leg room, or convenience such as easy access to toilets,” Prof Drury said.

“Frequent flyers might book their seat as close as possible to the front of the plane, so they can disembark quickly.”

Of course in certain scenarios, such as a plane crash into a mountain or nosedive into the ocean, the positioning of passengers was irrelevant.

Prof Drury said pilots were trained to minimise potential risk in emergency events as best as they could, by looking for level places to land and avoiding mountains.

“The technique for landing in water requires assessing the surface conditions and attempting to land between waves at a normal landing angle,” he said.

“Aircraft are designed to be very robust in emergency situations. In fact, the main reason the cabin crew remind us to keep our seat belts fastened is not because of crash risk, but because of clear air turbulence that can be experienced at any time at high altitudes. It is this weather phenomenon that can cause the most damage to passengers and aircraft.”

He stressed that regardless of where you sat in an aeroplane, the chances of being involved in a fatal crash or incident were minuscule – or one in 205,552.

As an example, during 2019 there were almost 70 million flights worldwide and just 287 fatalities.

In contrast the odds of dying in a car crash were one in 102.

“Even so, we pay little attention to fatal road accidents but when we hear about an ATR72 crashing in Nepal it’s the lead story on every news page,” Prof Drury said.

“Perhaps it’s not a bad thing that there is such interest in plane crashes. Our concern ensures these tragic incidents are thoroughly investigated, which helps keep air travel safe.”