Best seats to sit in to survive a plane crash revealed by expert

Experts have revealed the best seats to sit in to give yourself the highest chance of surviving a plane crash.

Air travel is mostly very safe, but unfortunately accidents do sometimes happen, and strangely your chances of survival may depend on where you're sitting.

There have been many stories where only a few people have survived a catastrophic air crash, bringing up questions of whether the location of their seat on the plane was a factor in their survival.

It's a question which has puzzled people for a long time, even leading some people to take it into account when booking seats.

Do you get a seat over the wing because that's the most structurally sound bit? But wait no because that's nearer the fuel tanks, so what about at the back of the plane?

Well, this question was put to Professor Helen Muir, who was the director of the Cranfield Institute for Safety, Risk and Reliability back in 2014, and she raised a pretty important point.

Plane crashes are relatively rare, but do happen (Getty Stock)

That is, no two plane crashes are exactly the same.

One crash might see the plane go nose first, another with the tail or the middle, or the wing, any of which would impact which seats would be most vulnerable.

For example, you might think it's safer to go at the back, because if the nose hits the ground first then you'll be more likely survive - but what if there's a fire at the back of the plane?

Suddenly those seats at the front look a lot safer.

And of course, if you are unfortunate enough to be involved in a plane crash then there is no way you would be able to know precisely how that would play out, in fact you may not even know you're about to crash at all until very soon before.

Nonetheless, Professor Muir did have some advice, and that's related to the emergency exits.

There's one big problem when it comes to choosing a seat (Getty Stock)

She told the BBC: "There isn't exactly the safest place to sit on an aircraft, because one would have to know how it was going to hit the ground.

"However, having said that, I prefer to sit at a part of an aircraft that has access to the most exits, but I think that's due to my experience as an accident investigator, and believe that properly designed aircraft every seat has an equal chance of success."

But what should you do if there really is a crash?

Professor Muir said: "The answer is to go where you're allocated, but to make the most of whatever opportunities you have near you to escape should you need to do so."

So it seems that in the end, the safest seats to ensure you survive a plane crash are probably the ones in the airport.