Page 5 - IAV Digital Magazine #431

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
U.S. Government Ordered to Solve 'Case of the Incredible Shrinking Airline Seat'
By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. aviation authorities were ordered back to the drawing board on Friday to solve what a feder- al appeals judge called "The Case of the Incredible Shrinking Airline Seat."
Judge Patricia Millett told the Federal Aviation Administration to take another look at an advocacy group's assertion that shrinking air- line seats are imperiling passen- ger safety.
The judge rejected the FAA's argu- ment that seat size was unimportant to getting off the plane in an emer- gency.
"That makes no sense," she wrote for the three-judge panel, likening the rationale to doing "a study on tooth
decay that only recorded partici- pants’ sugar con- sumption" but did not look at brush- ing and flossing.
All three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed the FAA must conduct a new review of the request for regula- tions setting a min- imum airline seat size, but Judge Judith Rogers dis- sented from part of the court's ration- ale.
Airline seats have steadily decreased in size over the last several decades. Economy-class seat pitch has decreased from an average of 35 inches (89 cm) in the 1970s to 31 inches (79 cm), and in some air- planes to 28 inch- es (71 cm).
Average seat width has narrowed from
about 18 inches (46 cm)to 16.5 inches (42 cm) over the last decade.
Critics accuse the airlines of being more interested in profit than passen- ger health and safety.
FA A spokesman Greg Martin wrote in an e-mail the agency "does con-
sider seat pitch in testing and assessing the safe evacuation of com- mercial, passenger aircraft. We are studying the ruling carefully and any potential actions we may take to address the court’s findings."
An airline trade group declined to comment.
Seat pitch is the distance from one seat to the same spot on the one in front or behind.
The ruling was lim- ited to the question of whether smaller seats and larger passengers could have an impact on emergency egress. It did not require the FAA to look at the impact on com- fort and health.
A U.S. House of Representatives bill under consider- ation would require the FA A to set min- imum seat sizes on U.S. airlines and a minimum distance between rows to "protect the safety and health of airline passengers."
Last month American Airlines Group Inc said it would reduce leg room by one inch to 30 inches instead of two as originally planned on some seats in its Boeing 737 MAX jets.
United Airlines President Scott Kirby told a con- gressional hearing in May the airline had yet to decide whether to cut pitch to 29 inches in some seats. Nearly all United seats have at least 31 inches of pitch.
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine