In the Indian Airlines crash on the 12th, Ramesh, who was seated in seat 11A, became the only known survivor so far. However, experts point out that 11A is not necessarily the safest seat on the plane, as the seating configuration varies for each aircraft model. In this particular accident, 11A happened to be one of the seats near the escape exit on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
Robert Fox, a board member of the U.S. non-profit organization Flight Safety Foundation, reminded during an interview: "Every accident is different, and survival cannot be predicted solely based on seat position."
After his ordeal, Ramesh revealed that his seat was near the escape exit, which allowed him to escape the cabin after the crash. Ramesh also mentioned that the exit on the other side of the plane was blocked by a building wall.
Greg Batchelor, chairman of an Australian aviation consultancy, said: "In this particular case, because the passenger was seated near an escape exit, it was obviously the safest seat that day. But it's not always 11A that's the safest, it just happens to be 11A in the configuration of the Boeing 787."
According to a report by the Beijing News, Wang Yanan, editor-in-chief of China's ‘Aviation Knowledge’, believes it is currently unclear why this passenger was able to survive. Based on the existing information, for a preliminary judgment, the environment of the aircraft crash was complicated. "The aircraft crashed in an area densely packed with buildings. In such a scenario, I analyze that the passenger might have been thrown out due to the aircraft disintegrating or the impact force at the time of the crash, and the impact was not too severe for him." Simultaneously, the survivor's landing spot may have had something shielding him, blocking the fuel spray, otherwise surviving in the inferno would be very difficult.
Whether one has a chance to survive in an air crash is of significant concern. Some netizens express the view that "11A" or, in other words, a front-row seat in economy class near the emergency exit, might be a "magical escape position", but a simple comparison would reveal no necessary connection. Air crashes are often accompanied by tragic casualties, but occasionally miracles do occur. Besides this incident with Indian Airlines, there were also two survivors in the Jeju Air 7C2216 crash at the end of 2024, but their position during the event was at the tail of the aircraft.
So, is it possible that seat position 11A was a factor in this person's survival? Wang Yanan says: "Civil aircraft do not have design and structural solutions to cope with this level of crash." In other words, this passenger's survival had nothing to do with the seat position, it was purely a coincidence.