Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is running out of patience with the Federal Aviation Administration. The agency was instructed to set minimum seat sizes in legislation President Trump signed into law in October.
“The #1 travel complaint I get from airline customers is shrinking seats and — like the seats themselves — the FAA’s timeline to tackle this issue is getting smaller and smaller with each passing day,” Schumer said in a statement this month.
Seat width has dropped from an average of 18.5 inches to 17 inches and the space between rows, known as the seat pitch, has shrunk from about 35 inches to 31 inches, according to nonprofit consumer organization FlyersRights.org. The slimmest seat pitch currently employed by any airline is Spirit Airline’s 28 inches.
The FAA reauthorization bill that was signed into law last month requires the agency to “issue regulations that establish minimum dimensions for passenger seats” on airlines that would determine “minimums for seat pitch, width, and length, and that are necessary for the safety of passengers.” The agency was given a year to create the standards and the public will have the opportunity to submit comments to the FAA.
But according to Schumer, the agency hasn’t yet started to “implement the law” and so he is “demanding the FAA get to work on the plan to rein in the shrinking once and for all.”
“Implement the law and get us back to the days when, even though the seats were tight, you could fit in to them without severe discomfort,” Schumer said.
The FAA did not provide details on what steps the agency has made to examine and establish seat standards, but said that the agency is “is working to address the provision in the Reauthorization bill,” the agency said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
Charles Leocha, president and co-founder of Travelers United, said the nonprofit group has been angling for the FAA to keep current seat sizes “frozen in place” while it determines proper seat dimensions.
“We have been involved with the FAA trying to get them to either lock in or to put a moratorium on any change in seat size until they finish their study and until they come up with the new rules,” Leocha said. “However, we haven’t heard back from the FAA as to whether or not they will be willing to do that.”
Leocha said that Travelers United has not submitted any formal letters to the FAA yet, but noted that the group would be working with FlyersRights.org to urge the FAA to impose a moratorium on seat sizes.
FlyersRights.org did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
It’s uncertain if the new seat dimension minimums will actually provide consumers with more space though, since the legislation stipulates the new dimensions will be established based on passenger safety rather than consumer comfort.
The FAA said in July that it had no evidence to suggest that “current seat sizes are a factor in evacuation speed, nor that current seat sizes create a safety issue necessitating rule-making.”
FAA rules dictate that aircrafts must be evacuated within 90 seconds during emergencies, but evacuation tests have raised brows of critics who claim they don’t accurately portray real-life scenarios. The FAA also allows “the use of analysis in lieu of a full-scale demonstration” so that computer modeling can replace certain drills that use humans.
The Department of Transportation Inspector General, who said the FAA’s evacuation standards have not been “significantly updated” since 1990, is also conducting an audit of the agency’s evacuation practices, examining its “development and updating of aircraft emergency evacuation standards” and the “process for determining whether aircraft as currently configured meet evacuation standards.”
“That is a legitimate question, and should not be reliant on the somewhat artificial drills carried out by aircraft producers and/or airlines,” Robert Poole, director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation, said of the IG study.
Regardless, Travelers United will “absolutely” file comments to the FAA on the matter, Leocha said.
“We’re not trying to have every airline get down to 28 inches [for seat pitch],” Leocha said. “But that could happen.”
