According to Airline industry safety experts (and this has been well documented over the years) and recently on a TV documentary, the safest seats on any aircraft are not up front BUT in "steerage" right at the back. In fact in the most recent programme, the 2 seats at the back of some aircraft that can't be reclined, are deemed to be safest.
I'm sorry I cannot tell you the reason because I will continue to travel upfront regardless so promptly forgot the reason.
However, Im sure if you google "safest seats on airplanes" they will come up with the answer. Cheers. Muriel
Sorry to continue this OT part of the thread but Muriel is correct here. It is a well known fact that the majority of survivors in the jet age have come from the last few rows of seating. Why?
Well think about when a jet sadly crashes and what is almost always the first thing that you see in the news footage? A big tailplane sitting amongst the smouldering wreckage. The strongest part of a modern jet is the rear fuselage containing the horizontal and vertical stabilisers. This is also the location in most jets of the black box recorders, usually just forward of the rearmost doors.
Have a look at crash photos via a google search and you will see what I mean. Further if you look at the photos from the investigation of the EK tail strike in MEL in 2009 you can see inside the jet, look at the structural beams etc and the FDR and CVR locations (the black boxes) as an example of what I'm talking about.
Sitting over a wing is handy if you are close to an exit, and if the jet makes a splash like US Airways in the Hudson, or a runway overrun such as the AF A343 in Toronto, then you can get out, but in any other type of crash with fire you are sitting directly over the top of upwards of 10,000 litres of jet fuel.
Other examples of the crash survival in jets with pax seated at the rear include the Ethiopian 767 that was hijacked and ditched, the KE 747 that flew a misguided ILS and crashed in Korea, and recently the young child that survived the Afriqiyah Airways crash in Libya.
Now having said all of this I'd prefer to sit in J or Y+! When I do fly I'm mostly in Y so I like to sit just forward of the wing so I can see the workings of the engine and the wing! And also because I believe in the safety of air transport, you are 11 times more likely to have a car accident in your life.
Back on topic: As for bargain flights I got a few $18 HBA-MEL-HBA trips with JQ. Oh and I got a J class MEL-HBA for 9000 points once on QF. It's supposed to be 18000 so I was happy with that!
Cheers,
Boof
