Shrinking Plane Seats Don't Hinder Evacuations, FAA Says

Shrinking plane seats do not hinder evacuations, the Federal Aviation Administration said Tuesday in response to a federal appeals court case.

The statement comes after the Flyers Rights group raised concerns in a challenge at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, noting that tighter seating in planes could slow down emergency evacuations.

However, the FAA said this week that airline seating does not need to be regulated as evacuation tests have disproved these concerns, USA Today reported.

Last year an appeals court panel ordered that the FAA reconsider its decision not to regulate the size of airline seats as a safety issue.

Over the years, airlines have steadily reduced the space between rows to squeeze in extra seats and make more money.

On certain carriers, the distance between the headrest of one seat and that of the seat in front of it, a distance called "pitch," has shrunk to 28 inches, yet there is no standard regulation in place to monitor this.

Flyers Rights questions what would happen in an emergency evacuation from these seats.

"With tighter seat pitches, more passengers, and a real-world passenger mix of the young, the old, the tall, the plus-sized, the muscle-bound and the disabled, along with emotional support animals, it’s not a good picture," the group said in a statement.

The FAA’s executive director for aviation safety, Dorenda Baker, responded in a six-page filing that there was "no evidence" that these shrinking seat dimensions could "hamper the speed of passenger evacuation, or that increasing passenger size creates an evacuation issue," USA Today reported.

The FAA noted that a quick evacuation was dependent on the sequencing.

"Passengers, regardless of their size, all use those first few seconds to get out of their seats, then either enter the aisle or wait to enter the aisle," said Jeffrey Gardlin, the senior technical specialist for aircraft cabin security and survivability at FAA.

Paul Hudson, the lawyer who filed the case for Flyers Rights retaliated that there have not been full-scale evacuation tests performed in decades despite the fact that passengers are growing bigger in size.

"If you don’t do the tests, obvious if you stick your head in the sand, you’re not going to have evidence," Hudson said, according to USA Today.

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