Let the armrest elbow wars continue. This week, in response to a federal appeals court case, the Federal Aviation Administration announced it will not regulate the size of seats on airplanes, despite consumer complaints about comfort and questions about safety.
The nonprofit advocacy group FlyersRights.org had filed a petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia requesting the FAA establish guidelines for seat dimensions; it noted the discomfort of shrinking seats and the potential danger for plane evacuations caused by narrow rows.
Though the agency requires that all planes must be evacuated in case of emergency in 90 seconds, it claimed, in its Monday letter to FlyersRights.org announcing its decision, “that seat width and pitch, even in combination with increasing passenger size, do not hamper the speed of an evacuation.”
The agency relies on passenger evacuation simulations that are run and filmed by airplane manufacturers when forming its conclusions. But Paul Hudson, a lawyer and the president of FlyersRights.org, said the drills did not include children, the elderly, infirm or obese – passengers likely to slow down an evacuation.
“Seats have gotten smaller and people have gotten bigger,” Hudson said, noting that seat pitch – the distance from one seat back to the next – was 31 to 35 inches in the 1970s. Now it’s down to as low as 28 on low-cost carriers like Spirit Airlines. Seat width, he added, was about 18.5 inches, and is now 17 to 17.5 inches.