Plane crashes are extremely rare. The odds of dying in a plane crash are about one in 205,552, says Business Insider. However, experts have determined the safest place to sit is in a middle seat at the back of the plane.

“We rarely book a flight with hopes of getting one of the middle seats in the last row. Well guess what? These seats are statistically the safest ones on the plane,” said Doug Drury, professor, and head of aviation at Central Queensland University in Australia.

Time magazine did a study of aircraft accidents that analyzed both fatalities and survivors over a 35 year period and found that the seats in the rear third of the aircraft had the best outcomes (28% fatality rate). The worst-faring seats were on the aisle in the middle third of the cabin (44% fatality rate).

After a crash, survivors who are near an exit are more likely to get out alive, according to the Time study, that looked at 17 plane crashes that had seat charts. These were the odds of dying in crashes, according to the charts:

• Back of the plane, middle seat: 28% - close to one in five.

• Back of the plane, aisle seat: 32% - about one in three.

• Middle of the plane, middle seat: 39% - about one in 2.5 passengers.

• Middle of the plane, aisle seat: 44% - just under one in two.

• Front of the plane: 38% - about one in 2.5 passengers.

The Time study found that aisle seats, at least in the middle of the plane, were the least safe, says Business Insider. And middle seats near the back were the safest.

“This logically makes sense,” says Drury. “Sitting next to an exit row will always provide you with the fastest exit in case of an emergency, granted there’s no fire on that side. But the wings of a plane store fuel, so this disqualifies the middle exit rows as the safest option.”

Drury says that being closer to the front of the plane means you will be impacted before those in the back, which leaves the last exit row as the safest. Other research has backed this up, proving that the front of the plane wasn’t a good place to be during an emergency landing. However, Drury cautions that by the very nature of accidents, rules can be broken. For example, in the 1989 United Flight 232 crash in Sioux City 184 of the 296 people onboard survived the accident and most of these were sitting behind first class, in the front of the plane, noted Drury.

The chances of surviving a crash into a mountain or landing in the ocean nose-first have even slimmer chances for the survival of passengers, said the expert, who added that pilots are well trained to find the best place to crash and the best angle to land on water. This skill was highlighted in the movie, Sully, which followed pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger’s classic 2009 emergency landing of US Airways flight 1549 on the Hudson River.

Flying is still the safest form of transport. According to the U.S. National Safety Council, a person’s lifetime odds of dying in a plane crash are about one in 205,552, which is about 2,000 times less dangerous than a car, where the odds are 1 in 103. But if you are still nervous about flying, reserve one of the seats in the back.