Is 11A the safest seat on a plane – and will it cost you more?

When Air India flight 171 crashed after takeoff, only one passenger survived, and now flyers want to know how to improve their own chances if disaster strikes.

Vishwash Kumar Ramesh was the only survivor of flight 171, prompting a visit from India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. Picture: AFP/Getty Images

When Air India flight 171 crashed seconds after takeoff earlier this month, initial reports said all 242 passengers had died. Yet through the rubble and the burning fuselage emerged one survivor: Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, the man in seat 11A.

Data from Google Trends, which analyses web traffic, showed a huge spike in people searching for the seat number as well as “which seat is safest on a plane” after the crash.

So is 11A the sacred seat? It certainly was for that Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner. Experts believe Ramesh managed to escape the burning wreck because on that specific configuration 11A was a bulkhead emergency exit row seat – behind the cabin partition wall. It was the first economy-class seat and, crucially, next to the door.

Carriers report that emergency exit rows are typically the first sold, not because of the door but the extra legroom. However, 11A is not always among them.

On Ryanair, it’s the worst seat on the jet – on its Boeing 737-800s a quirk means 11A is a windowless “window seat”.

So where is the best place to sit? Over the years there have been relatively few tests, largely because planes are so expensive and even once retired can be sold for parts – but it has been done.

In 2012, scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology ran a real-world test of a Boeing 727 crash. It was the world’s largest remote-control plane when it slammed into the Sonoran Desert in Baja California, Mexico.

“We crash cars all the time. We don’t do that with planes to see if we can make them safer, which is what makes this such a unique opportunity,” Dr Cynthia Bir, a biomechanist at Wayne State University, which was also involved in the project, said at the time.

On impact the plane’s nose and the forward rows were torn off. Scientists concluded that the passengers in the front rows “would almost certainly not have survived the crash and the crew would most likely have been killed too”.

Initial reports suggested there had been no survivors in the Air India crash. Picture: Siddharaj Solanki/EPA

They said passengers in the centre of the plane would have survived with minor injuries, while those at the rear would have been mostly unharmed. Impact forces at the front of the plane peaked at 12G (12 times the force of gravity). In the centre the force was less, at 8G, while at the rear it was 6G, no greater than being hit in a fairground bumper car.

Ultimately, knowing which seat is safest depends on the circumstances of each crash. An analysis of 35 years of Federal Aviation Administration records by Time in 2015 suggested that, on average, middle seats towards the back had the lowest fatality rates in crashes where some passengers died and others lived.

It found seats near wings had more protection but the middle section of the plane was closer to the fuel tanks. The front, including first-class and business-class cabins, often absorbed the brunt of the impact.

Another study, from the University of Greenwich in 2008, indicated that being within five rows of an emergency exit could also increase survival chances, as it allowed for quicker evacuation.

In the case of Ramesh and the Air India disaster, it seems that being by the door, which potentially burst open on impact, was key. That he was the sole survivor is a stark reminder that the fragility of life and air accidents are rarely good bedfellows.

The Times