The last week of 2024 saw two airline crashes. On December 25, Azerbaijan Airlines flight crash-landed near Aktau in Kazakhstan killing 38 of 67 people on board.

On December 29, a Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 aircraft crashed during an emergency landing at Muan International Airport in South Korea. There were 181 people on board the flight from Bangkok. Only two people survived the Jeju Air crash. There was one thing common in both the crashes. Most of the survivors were seated in the rear part of the aircraft.

At least three studies, that looked into air disasters over decades, found that most survivors during airline accidents were seated either at the rear of the aircraft or on the aisle seats in the middle of the aircraft cabin. But airline safety regulators maintain that there is not any one section of an airplane that is more or less safe than another. Their SOP for passengers during any flight emergency is to follow instructions of the crew.