Amanda Ripley Author of The Unthinkable

The crash of the Spanair flight in Madrid on Wednesday was exceptionally awful, even within the already grim category of plane crashes. Only 19 of the 172 people on board survived. In most serious plane accidents, the survival rate is higher, and passenger behavior can make a big difference. (The cause of the crash is still unknown.)

In this case, I was particularly struck by the story of one survivor from the crash--a young boy who was rescued by a firefighter. Moments after he was pulled from the fiery wreck, he repeatedly asked the firefighter where his father…

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...is the seat you can get out of the fastest. So the aisle seat near an exit row is slightly safer than other seats on the plane, on average, according to a study out of the University of Greenwich in the UK.

The flurry of recent media attention focused on this particular finding, but the broader implication is that anything you can do to increase your speed of exit (from counting the number of rows to the exit to familiarizing yourself with how to open the exit door) could also boost your odds.

In…

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