Originally Posted by
eng3
… I'm not sure how an empty seat in the exit row is safer. If you only have one person and he is incapacitated, now you have no one to quickly open the door. If there are two or three people, maybe one of those people are able to open. On a normal day, what percentage of people sitting in an exit row actually have the strength to lift the door or would know what to do? So in my mind, the more people in the exit row, the higher the chance that at least one person will be able to do it when the time comes. If you know of any studies on this, I'd be interest in reading about it. …
(Writing as a designated Navy Flight Surgeon (retired) tasked in part with being the Human Factors expert for Navy Mishap (crash) investigations, board certified Emergency Medicine specialist, 1800 hour private pilot, participant of a MegaDO which included a day at an airline flight attendant training center which included opening a window emergency exit (it’s heavy and most people would have to hold it against their shoulder rather than as usually depicted with their arms outstretched, nice to see on the 737Max I just flew on the window exits opens in a clamshell manner which required much less strength) and sliding down a slide (careful for friction burns), and hundreds of flights seated in a window exit row seat. I realize my experience is infinitesimally small compared to the overall numbers but those hundreds of flight do influence my opinions.)
I’m not aware of any studies, IMO it’s all speculation and opinion. I wrote “… (arguably) an empty middle seat in the exit row is safer for all others …” referring to 3 seats, so an empty middle seat would often still leave 2 others in the row to open the exit. My estimation is that 70% of people seated in the exit row are physically capable of actually doing so. Most likely the person in the window seat would open the exit and be the first out. Every other person egressing just adds more time to the total evacuation time so an empty middle seat is one less person, one less chance to cause a delay or obstruction, in a critical location. The statistical probability of a person in the exit row being incapacitated is unknown but probably not very different than the probability of any pax being incapacitated. An empty middle seat is one less person who could be incapacitated (and thus cause an obstruction).
The only well documented statistic regarding airplane crash survivors I’m aware of is that most survivors get out of the wreck by themselves, few (injured or incapacitated) survivors have been carried or pulled out. Thus it stands to reason that the safest seat is a seat nearest an exit. Cannot predict ahead of time front or middle or back of the plane, some crashes the front was the safest, some the back. Cannot predict ahead of time window or middle or aisle seat. Can predict ahead of time that survival is more likely if the person can get out of the wreckage by themselves.