If backwards facing seats in the event of a crash result in less injuries/deaths, why are plane seats not backwards facing?
I know there are a few seats that face backwards but why not the majority?
If backwards facing seats in the event of a crash result in less injuries/deaths, why are plane seats not backwards facing?
I know there are a few seats that face backwards but why not the majority?
Comments
Facing forward leads to less motion sickness.
You don’t usually die from motion sickness, but it’s still probably a bigger health concern than dying on an airplane.
The same reason as car seats. For an infant there’s a big difference in survival, but for adults the difference isn’t as much.
BA’s business class has forward facing and backward facing seats. The brace position differs on which way you’re facing. In an emergency another thing you need to remember
You get pushed back in your seat when you take off, probably more so than when the plane slows down after landing.
Not having people feel like they are being thrown off their seats on takeoff with the plane even pointing up, which would point your seat down if facing backwards.
The odds of surviving and getting less injuries are higher but they aren’t that much higher, after all it’s still a plane crashing.
One of the big reasons is that most people just aren’t comfortable sitting facing away from the direction of travel.
Just look at trains and buses where the odds of surviving are much higher, there are very few seats facing backwards and the backwards facing seats aren’t used as much as forward facing seats.
There is also the issues that would come up from sitting backwards in every other situation, from having to get up and into the aisle and then turning around to deboard the plane, to it making things more difficult and a case of having to evacuate the plane in a non crash situation.
The benefits are just not worth the negatives. Better to just lower the chances of a plane crashing in the first place and improve passenger safety in other ways.
Planes don’t normally crash with the front like cars. They crash down. Seat orientation is less critical.
Just wear your seatbelt.
Because in a crash all the loose crap in the cabin will be flying towards the squishy humans and their unprotected bodies/faces. With the seatbacks between the meatbags and the flying knives/forks/plates, etc the humans will have fewer injuries.
Also, humans are used to looking forward to where they are going and are less likely to get motion sickness on the plane.
I once took a ride on an ocean ferry in a rear facing seat and it was miserable. I could never see the wave approaching and would just get my head and back smashed into the setback, then see the waves crashing over the cabin windows. Never again facing rearward.
Side note: Some planes do have seats facing backwards, flew some smaller turboprop before.
The start is kinda uncomfortable because gravity pushes you out of your seat.
Second question, why are people so obsessed with the idea of “crash safety” in airplanes? Do they just not understand the statistics on airline accidents?
You see this all the time on social media with people wondering about stupid things like parachutes or coming with truly insane ideas about airlines wanting people to die in crashes…
Fatal crashes happen so rarely in flight and when they do happen there is often nothing whatsoever that will save anyone. You will occasionally see crashes where some random ideas would’ve saved lives, but those are PREPOSTEROUSLY rare. It would be like trying to make cars able to withstand meteorite impacts.
There’s enough of a difference that military transport aircraft often have rearwards-facing seats. It’s rarely done on commercial aircraft as passengers don’t like it, but those in the military aren’t in a position to complain. I’ve done many trans-Atlantic flight facing backwards and it never really bothered me.
Backward facing seats would lead to motion sickness and generally be unpleasant for passengers. Airline travel is also incredibly safe. So if implemented 99.99% of people would experience a significantly worse flights, meaning millions of people would have a worse experience over and over in their lives, only getting the downsides, and it might save a few lives at most
I sat at the front of the plane in a backwards facing seat once. There were these two seats at the front that faced towards all of the other seats in the plane facing the normal way.
It was incredibly uncomfortable because most of the first half of the flight we are climbing into the sky. So I had to keep my seatbelt on to keep myself from literally sliding forward out of my seat.
Military transports used to do that (maybe still in some cases), it is obviously safer in a crash but some people don’t like it/feel disoriented… Some kids car seats and many train seats face backwards of course.
The ELI5 answer here is simple: the benefit doesn’t outweigh the drawbacks.
Facing backwards makes you feel more motion sickness than facing forwards. When planes do crash, often the crash is so violent nobody survives anyway – changing the direction you face wouldn’t change this outcome. So the benefit is almost nil, yet millions of people travelling annually would have more motion sickness.
I’d rather they spent the money making the plane not crash than making sure we were more comfortable as our fellow passengers all merge into meat soup.
You are several orders of magnitude more likely to get airsick than to be involved in a plane crash. For that matter, you are also orders of magnitude more likely to die in a car crash.
I’ve sat in rear-facing seats on Southwest flights a few times. I never had a problem with it. Of course, their rear-facing were across from front-facing. If you stagger feet with the person opposite you, it’s more legroom.
Raf had tri stars that used to have the seats backwards, was weird taking off/landing rollercoaster kinda feeling for me, once at cruising felt no different.