The expert adds that being close to an emergency exit — like Viswash Kumar Ramesh‘s seat 11A was on this plane — allows the passenger to be the first off the plane in the worst scenarios, which can mean life or death within a matter of seconds.

He points out in Ramesh‘s case, you can see in videos of the explosion there was a ton of fuel, but Ramesh was apparently saved from the inferno by sitting forward of fuel tanks located by the wings.

However, the retired pilot wants to emphasize there’s no such thing as a guaranteed safe seat on any type of aircraft. He jokes pilots are usually the first to arrive at a crash site … but in every plane crash instance, each seat’s level of safety varies depending on the nature of the incident.