Ever Wondered Why Planes Don’t Have a Row 13? Here’s Why

If you’ve ever scrolled through your flight’s seat map, you might have noticed something strange. The rows go from 12 straight to 14. No row 13. It isn’t a mistake or a printing error. It’s a quiet decision that blends superstition, psychology, and centuries of human belief — a small change made to keep passengers just a little more comfortable while flying miles above the earth.

Flying can already make many people nervous. So when a number is believed to bring bad luck, airlines sometimes prefer to skip it altogether. After all, peace of mind can be as important as a seatbelt.
The world has a name for the fear of the number 13 — triskaidekaphobia. The superstition goes back centuries. It was mentioned as early as 1911 in an American psychology journal, showing that even modern science couldn’t ignore how deep this fear runs. The number 13 has long been connected to bad luck, from Judas being the thirteenth guest at the Last Supper to ancient myths that warned against gatherings of 13 people.


Numbers have meaning. Across cultures, 12 is seen as complete — 12 months in a year, 12 zodiac signs, 12 gods of Olympus. Thirteen feels like an unwelcome guest at a table meant for twelve. That tiny imbalance made people uneasy for generations, and that unease followed them everywhere — even into airplanes.

For airlines, skipping row 13 isn’t about belief, it’s about comfort. They know that some passengers carry deep-seated fears about the number, and a flight is the last place anyone wants to feel uneasy. So instead of challenging superstition, airlines simply design around it. Many seating charts go straight from row 12 to 14, giving anxious travelers one less thing to worry about.It’s not just the number 13 that gets a bad reputation. In Italy and Brazil, 17 is seen as unlucky. In Roman numerals, it’s written as XVII — rearranged, it forms the word VIXI, meaning “I have lived,” a phrase once used on ancient tombs. To avoid stirring that association, some airlines skip both rows 13 and 17, especially on international routes.

Several well-known carriers leave out row 13 entirely.

European airlines such as Lufthansa, Ryanair, Iberia, ITA, KLM, and Air France have removed it.

From the Middle East, Emirates and Qatar Airways do the same, while in Asia, Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Thai Airways, and Hong Kong Airlines follow suit.

Lufthansa once even tweeted about it in 2017: “Rows 13 and 17 are missing because these are considered unlucky numbers. Better safe than sorry.”

Not everyone avoids it. In the United States, American Airlines, Delta, and Southwest all include row 13 without hesitation. However, United Airlines skips both 13 and 14, reflecting Chinese beliefs where the number 14 sounds similar to the phrase “will die.” In the UK, Virgin Atlantic skips row 13, while British Airways, easyJet, and Jet2.com keep it as part of their layout.

Many passengers have their own flying rituals. Some wear lucky socks, others touch the outside of the plane before stepping in, or silently pray before takeoff. A Euro News report once found that nearly 17 percent of passengers said they felt calmer after touching the aircraft before boarding. Even pilots have habits — eating the same pre-flight meal or tapping the wing before they enter the cockpit.

Superstition can affect more than just comfort — it can change the cost of flying. According to a Euro News report, flights from the UK to Europe are often cheaper on Friday the 13th because fewer travelers are willing to fly that day. Some tickets can drop by almost 40 percent, proving that belief has its own economy.

Maybe skipping row 13 doesn’t make a flight safer, but it does make it calmer. And when people are thousands of feet in the air, calm matters more than coincidence. Every missing row, every small ritual, and every quiet superstition reveals something about us — that even in a world ruled by logic and technology, we still carry our stories, our fears, and our faith wherever we go.

So next time you’re buckling your seatbelt and notice row 13 is missing, take a moment to wonder — do we shape our beliefs, or do our beliefs still shape us? ✈️