# Safest seat on a plane **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 12, 2010, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/safest-seat-on-a-plane/539234 "2010-05-12T22:57:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/safest-seat-on-a-plane/539234/41 "2010-05-14T05:15:34Z")
> [@gotpasswords](#): > > I like to sit in the middle over the wing - this is almost always the plane’s center axis of motion, so the ride is smoother. Think of it like sitting at the far end of a teeter-totter, or sitting in the center. This. I hate to fly because I am prone to motion sickness. This helps reduce the changes of my field-testing a barf bag. ---
**Author:** ![xash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c6cbf5/32.png) [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/safest-seat-on-a-plane/539234/42 "2010-05-14T05:42:31Z")
> [@Richard\_Pearse](#): > > That’s because you’re not permitted to be in a seat other than your ticketed one for take-off. Weight and balance is calculated on a particular seating arrangement and the aircraft take-off trim setting is set based on this as well. Does this happen on commercial flights? I’ve never been weighed when I check-in or board, so how could this statement be true? ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/safest-seat-on-a-plane/539234/43 "2010-05-14T08:11:27Z")
Standard weights are used. They may only use standard weights if the passengers are average. If you’re carrying a plane load of rugby players you are supposed to get actual weights. I’ve never seen that happen but I’ve also never been on a plane with an unusual load. The larger the number of passengers carried, the closer they will be to the average. That’s partly why small aircraft aren’t permitted to do this. Not only does a small aeroplane not carry enough people for them to approach an average total weight, but it also takes a much smaller weight increase to put one over weight or out of trim. Every now and then the aviation authority revises what standard weights should be. Not surprisingly the standard weights have been increased in recent years. I sometimes see incident reports in our company filed by flight crews who discover that there are more children on the aircraft than notified in the load sheet. Their concern is that if these errors aren’t caught, the aircraft could be out of trim. This is on BAE146 and B717 aircraft. ---
**Author:** ![mnemosyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/safest-seat-on-a-plane/539234/44 "2010-05-14T20:32:19Z")
Although it was on a small Beechcraft 1900 (19 passengers, 2 crew), one of the contributing factors to [this crash](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Midwest_Flight_5481) was an overweight plane with a centre of gravity about 5% aft of allowable. [This crash](http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2006/AAR0604.htm) of a Challenger 600 business jet had a similar cause; the centre of gravity was too far forward and the airplane was unable to rotate on take off. I can’t think of any accidents or incidents involving larger aircraft in which passenger placement contributed to cause, but weight and balance is certainly calculated for them as well. When loading the plane with passengers and cargo, of course, one does want to avoid [this](http://www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft/jetliner/b747/b747_21.jpg)situation. ---
**Author:** ![Barrett\_Bonden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5e9695/32.png) [@Barrett\_Bonden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barrett_Bonden)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2010, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/safest-seat-on-a-plane/539234/45 "2010-05-15T16:36:48Z")
> [@flyboy](#): > > There are so many problems with this study that it’s arguably useless. For starters, I immediately see the 11 out of 20 and think, _that means that 9 out of 20 did not favor the back–pretty close call_. Then I see they only analyzed accidents for which they could determine seating, leaving out, I assume, many other accidents which could easily have swayed the data one way or another (or not at all). Also, the sample size is tiny. Twenty crashes? Why not increase the pool to international accidents? It’s very difficult to generalize the smaller your sample size is, and twenty is pretty dang small. Seconding this. I also want to point out that even among their teensey sample size, there is no crash template. Airline disasters tend to be caused by a variable complex combination of individually unlikely occurrences. In the [Sioux City crash](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232), for instance, the plane landed as it landed (breaking into three sections) because they didn’t hit a wind gust right before they touched down. (The pilots were manually reacting to air currents while attempting a landing because they had no horizontal stabilizer.) Whereas for the [Tenerife](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster) airport disaster, survival depended entirely on the point of strike, which depended on how sharply the KLM plane banked upward after the pilot saw the Pan Am, and where the Pan Am was positioned relative to the strike as it was beginning to taxi. Sure, if you could guarantee that the next crash would be identical to Sioux City, identical air currents and all, you’d know not to sit in first class. The next crash is going to be completely different, and caused by a completely different unlikely set of factors. ---
**Author:** ![Staggerlee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/staggerlee/32/3134_2.png) [@Staggerlee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Staggerlee)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2010, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/safest-seat-on-a-plane/539234/46 "2010-05-19T11:06:52Z")
Ejector seat. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2010, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/safest-seat-on-a-plane/539234/47 "2010-05-19T12:04:11Z")
> [@Richard\_Pearse](#): > > Because they have no way of telling you’re not in your assigned seat unless they check all of the tickets and that would be too time consuming. Normally if someone sits in the wrong seat it becomes apparent when the rightful seat owner turns up. Because you’re waiting to board last this doesn’t happen to you, and when one person does it, it doesn’t matter, but if everyone did it it would be not so good. Obviously it won’t mater for trim in a full aeroplane because the weight distribution will be similar regardless of who is sitting where. On an aeroplane with more empty seats there’s more room for problems if, for example, everyone decided to sit at the back because they thought it was safer. You’re kind of relying on everyone else doing the right thing so that you can do the wrong thing and be more comfortable. Earlier this month I was on a Southwest Airlines flight. About 130 seats on the plane, and only 40 passengers i.e. nowhere near full. As you may or may not know, Southwest Airlines does not assign seats when you check in. Seat selection is on a first-come, first-serve basis. You line up at the gate in the order that you checked in (smart people check in online 23 hrs 59 mins before departure), get on board, and pick whichever seat you want. The crew counted up the number of passengers once everyone is on board, but I don’t believe they made any kind of record about where passengers were sitting, and they didn’t ask anyone to relocate for any reason. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2010, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/safest-seat-on-a-plane/539234/48 "2010-05-19T13:55:41Z")
Yeah I’m aware that some airlines have free seating. I don’t know what system they use but they would certainly have one. Their existance doesn’t invalidate what I’m saying. If you are flying Southwest by all means sit where you like, though you may find that if everyone decided to sit in the back some may be asked to move. It’s likely the trim may be done for a range of possible seating positions. As an example of this, my company doesn’t normally carry passengers. On the rare occasion that we do have one I’d do a trim sheet for the passenger sitting down the back and one for them sitting up the front in the cockpit jumpseat. That way they are free to sit where they like, but ONLY because I have covered all of the options. Speculating only, but I’d expect free seating companies aren’t able to work to the limits of trim the way airlines with allocated seating can. ---
**Author:** ![mnemosyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2010, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/safest-seat-on-a-plane/539234/49 "2010-05-19T19:28:50Z")
> [@Joe Frickin Friday](#): > > Earlier this month I was on a Southwest Airlines flight. About 130 seats on the plane, and only 40 passengers i.e. nowhere near full. As you may or may not know, Southwest Airlines does not assign seats when you check in. Seat selection is on a first-come, first-serve basis. You line up at the gate in the order that you checked in (smart people check in online 23 hrs 59 mins before departure), get on board, and pick whichever seat you want. The crew counted up the number of passengers once everyone is on board, but I don’t believe they made any kind of record about where passengers were sitting, and they didn’t ask anyone to relocate for any reason. It’s possible that so few passengers, likely more-or-less scattered around a 737 did not risk taking the plane out of it’s CG range, but it’s also very, very probable that the amount of cargo - and it’s loading/location - onboard the aircraft was changed in order to ensure that the plane remained within its allowable limits. The amount of fuel on board, and its location, was also likely adapted for the small passenger load. I think it is much easier to put a small plane - like a regional jet - out of CG than it is a big one, simply due to the relative magnitudes of the passengers to the plane. It is a serious concern for smaller planes. [musing]I don’t think Southwest has ever had a large fatal accident where many/most on board died and where there may have been a post-impact fire. Although DNA is used nowadays to confirm the identities of victims/body parts, I would think that in a free-seating plane where 150 passengers could sit anywhere they wanted, that job would become much more difficult since it wouldn’t be possible to narrow down a likely victim to a handful of remains in a certain area of the aircraft. It would certainly make the cost of an investigation somewhat greater! [/musing] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/safest-seat-on-a-plane/539234.md?page=2)