Ah hurtling through the air in a device made of several million parts in a portion of the Earth where the temperature generally sits at -40 degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit and there isn’t enough oxygen or atmospheric pressure to keep you alive. All the while a rather complex combination of a controlled explosion and rapidly spinning parts is both providing the oxygen you’re breathing, initially at 400 degrees Fahrenheit or 200 degrees Celsius (more on this in the Bonus Facts later), while it also propels you along at hundreds of miles per hour in order to defeat gravity’s deathly pull. In the meantime, some smiling individual serves you a tasty beverage and a little bag of pretzels. As you go through turbulence and see the wings of your plane bending back and forth at upwards of 7 meters of flex at the tips, you may find yourself rethinking your life choices. But while all the factors that go into asserting dominance over gravity and distance may make it seem bonkers that this is a practically feasible mode of transportation, as I think most are aware, outside of riding an elevator, which is arguably the safest way to travel, there really isn’t much of a safer way out there to get from point A to point B than large commercial aircraft, not even walking. That said, commercial aviation accidents still do happen. So, if you do ever find yourself in such, what is the safest seat on the airplane for you to be sitting in order to reduce the odds of being injured or dying? And what other ways can you ensure you’re as least likely as possible to cease to exist on a plane if it ever plummets from the sky while you’re sitting in it?

Well, put your tray tables and seatbacks in their upright position, fasten your safety belt, and let’s nose dive into it all, shall we? And further look at a rather crazy incident in 2012 in Mexico in which the pilots deliberately parachuted out of a Boeing 727, which then plummeted towards the Earth afterward.

Author: Daven Hiskey
Host: Simon Whistler
Producer: Samuel Avila

0:00 Intro
1:35 How Bonkersly Safe Commercial Passenger Aviation Has Become
10:25 Safest Seat on the Plane
24:20 Other Ways to Maximize Odds to Survive a Plane Crash
29:40 Bonus Facts: How the Engines Provide the Oxygen You’re Breathing
31:23 First Ever Person Killed in a Plane Crash
32:40 Human Sardines
36:32 90 Seconds
39:03 Eternal Sleep

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