The Federal Aviation Administration will not seek to regulate airline seating size because the current dimensions do not pose an immediate safety threat to passengers, the agency said on Tuesday in a letter to a nonprofit passenger rights organization.
FlyersRights.org previously argued in the D.C. appeals court that larger passengers are unable to swiftly evacuate in an emergency because of the smaller seat sizes. The FAA in its letter said it has no evidence that the existing dimensions “hamper the speed of passenger evacuation, or that increasing passenger size creates an evacuation issue.”
“The time it takes passengers to get out of their seats, even if those seats are relatively narrow and close together, is less than the time it takes for the emergency exits to begin functioning and for the line that begins forming in the aisle to clear,” aviation safety director Dorenda Baker wrote. “The FAA has no evidence that a typical passenger, even a larger one, will take more than a couple seconds to get out of his or her seat.”
The Department of Transportation’s inspector general is in the midst of examining the FAA’s evacuation criteria.
House-passed legislation to fund the FAA included a provision that would require the agency to set minimum seating standards for airlines. The Senate counterpart bill does not include that language. The Trump administration previously urged the chamber to address a number of provisions it views as troublesome in the House legislation.
