All day today, everyone’s been writing news articles and blogging about planes. And not to intentionally join the trend, but a comment on a blog about airplane safety caught my eye.
Turns out Popular Mechanics put to test the myth about every airplane seat being equally safe. You can read the article if you want the ins and outs of the statistical data, but in jet crashes with both fatalities and survivors (as opposed to one or the other only) the back seats are generally safer.
Out of 19 crashes between 1971 and the present with sufficient data to analyze, the front, middle, and back of the plane had 49%, 56% and 69% survivability in a crash. And while they made a big deal out of it, I’m not changing my ticket over 20% higher chances. Which brings me to my next point.
One of the commenters on the article wrote that a lot of things affect the safety of each seat and each passenger. While this person listed off proximity to the wings and engines, as well as the overall structure of different parts of the plane as being factors, he/she ended with another important safety factor: and individual’s “belief in God…”
I don’t know whether they were joking, or if they were seriously making statistical implications about prayer. But I do know that next time I get on a plane, the reason I’m not worried about that extra 20% average survivability rating is that I’m safe. If I get there at the end of a long life or a short plane ride, I’m going to the same place.
