Where is the safest seat in the plane?
Before I start, remember that we're talking about statistics of location in the aircraft, within statistics of survival of an accident (95%), which is itself dependent on a statistic of particular type of accident (approx 85% have no fatalities at all), within something which is already a very unlikely event (an aviation accident).

So let us for a moment assume that you're in a semi-survivable accident, ie where there are a mixture of fatalities and survivors - this is already a very unlikely scenario... in the vast majority of accidents either everybody dies (rare), or nobody does (most common).

To give you the straight out answer to your question, in such an accident, the rear of the plane is safest - more passengers have survived plane crashes in those seats than any other. This is due to most accidents being nose-first, so if it's going to be partially survivable your ideal location is near the back: the front of the aircraft essentially acting like a crumple zone. Thus, if an accident is survivable, you are more likely to survive in the back of the aircraft.

Of course, every accident is different - if your aircraft runs off the runway and spins, the back can impact first. Similarly if your aircraft stalls and pitches up. Alternately you could slew sideways into another aircraft in a taxiway etc etc... but in most cases, the impact is more likely to be nose-first, thus the rear is the safest place.

Also statistically, being near to a door but not next to a window gives the "optimum" chance of survival - more people survive in such locations. This is due to ease of evacuation (being near the aisle and the exit), and without being whacked in the head by a crumpling fuselage.

So if you're going on purely "increasing your chances", a non-window seat near the rear door is the best possible place to be in an accident... other than on the ground, having missed your plane.

The thing to remember, though, is that (referring to modern aviation)


Accident rates work out as roughly 1-per-1 million flights
Around 85-87% of aviation accidents involve no fatalities (so fatal accidents are around 15-per-100 million flights)
Even if you're in a crash where someone dies, Aviation accidents with fatalities have a fatality rate of somewhere between 5% and 25% (which is to say, even if we only look at accidents where one or more people do die, 75-95% of people in those accidents survive).


So that gives you a 1/4th to 1/20th of a chance of a 3/20th of a chance of a 1 in a million chance of becoming a statistic in my next post on this subject. So that would take you somewhere between 20 and 100 million flights before you die.

You have a 1-in-100-million chance of being in a fatal accident, and even then you a 75-95% chance of surviving it anyway.

So in short, if it's going to get you it will, if it's not it won't. By the time you've survived enough accidents for it to be anything more then sheer atrocious luck that you die at all, you'd already have developed a healthy fear of flying and have gathered enough air miles to take a taxi....