The two sole survivors aboard the Jeju Air plane crash that killed 179 people lived because they were seated at the rear of the aircraft — which is statistically the safest place to be on a commercial aircraft.
The pair, both flight attendants, were sitting in the tail section of the Boeing 737 plane when it skidded off the runway at Muan International Airport Sunday and slammed into a wall, officials said.
The tail was the only part of the doomed aircraft that was left remotely intact, Muan fire chief Lee Jung-hyun told a briefing.
“Only the tail part retains a little bit of shape, and the rest of (the plane) looks almost impossible to recognize,” the fire chief said.
A Time magazine analysis of 35 years of Federal Aviation Administration data, published in 2015, found that rear seats are statistically the safest in crashes.
It found that seats in the back third of the aircraft had a 32% fatality rate, compared with 39% in the middle third and 38% in the front third.
One of the survivors, Survivor Lee Mo, recalled buckling his seatbelt in the moments before the plane touched down. The next thing he remembered was waking up in a hospital bed.
“Where am I?… What happened?” were his first words, according to the Korea Times.
Lee and his colleague were likely seated in the rear because of their duties as flight attendants.
There are other factors that can also affect the odds of survival in a crash.
For example, sitting in an exit row can mean a quicker escape from a plane, Doug Drury, Professor of Aviation at Australia’s Central Queensland University, wrote in the Conversation.
However, Drury added that sitting in an exit row in the center of an aircraft, near the wings, can be even moredangerous as wings carry fuel and can catch fire or explode.
Choosing the middle seat over the window or aisle can also be safer.
“The middle seats are safer than the window or aisle seats, that is, as you might expect, because of the buffer provided by having people on either side,” Drury wrote.
The overall likelihood of dying in a plane crash, however, is extremely unlikely — regardless of what seat you pick.
According to the International Air Transport Association, there were no deaths due to commercial aviation accidents in 2023 — and only 30 total incidents. That is a minuscule average of just one accident for every 880,293 flights.
Those odds make flying the safest way to travel, with fewer deaths and injuries than busses and trains, according to the National Safety Council.
Investigators, meanwhile, are probing what caused Jeju Air Flight 2216 to end in tragedy.
The pilot — a veteran with nearly 7,000 hours of flight experience, according to the New York Times — reported a bird striking at least one engine just minutes before the Boeing 737 slammed to the ground and careened down the runway without deploying its landing gear or speed brakes.
It is possible that an engine failure also disabled the automated hydraulic systems for the landing gear and brakes, however there are manual overrides for these systems, one veteran pilot told The Times.
Aviation safety expert David Learmount told Sky News the concrete wall the plane slammed into should never have been at the end of the runway, and it was “verging on criminal” to have it in place.