Airline Sorry for Sharing 'Fact' About 'Safest' Seats in Crash

Dutch airline KLM is apologizing after one of its regional Twitter accounts suggested passengers in the back of a plane are less likely to die in a crash. "Seats at the back of a plane are the safest!" KLM India tweeted Wednesday, citing a 2015 Time article that described a 32% fatality rate in the back third of a plane over 30 years of aircraft accidents, compared to 39% in the middle third, and 38% in the front third, per Business Insider. The tweet featuring a picture of an airplane seat among the clouds was deleted after 12 hours, when the Washington Post sought comment.

"We will be reviewing our Twitter protocol to better ensure appropriate content," said KLM, responding on Twitter. The company also apologized "for any distress" caused by the tweet, which "was based on a publicly available aviation fact." Whether what @KLMIndia tweeted really is fact is debatable, per the Post. A Federal Aviation Administration rep tells the paper there are too many variables and too few crashes to determine a "statistically defensible" answer. Indeed, Time's own report notes "the chances of dying in an aircraft accident have less to do with where you sit and more to do with the circumstances surrounding the crash." (KLM is among the world's safest airlines, according to this ranking.)