Posted in Travel News
July 11, 2018
The FAA Just Announced It Won’t Be Regulating Seat Sizes – Here’s What That Means
If you’re someone who travels frequently and often feels cramped on planes, then you may have already been following the case in which the consumer advocate group Flyers Rights sued the Federal Aviation Administration. Pushing for regulation on airline seat sizing, this month the consumer advocate group received some unsettling news when the FAA announced that they would be deciding against the regulating of seat sizes.
When Flyers Rights sued the FAA last year in the U.S. Court of Appeals, they stated that they felt the cramped seating that’s found on airlines was a major safety issue inside airplane cabins. The legal matter resulted in the court ordering the FAA to file a disposition in regard to seat safety and pitch. While many hoped the major legal step forward would result in change, the FAA announced in a letter to Flyers Rights this month that there was no evidence currently showing that the seat sizes affect the speed of emergency evacuations.
The Federal Aviation Administration claims that they watched tests performed by companies like Airbus and Boeing that concluded seat size doesn’t create any issues for emergency evacuations. The one result of all this that might give travelers hope is that now the Department of Transportation will be auditing the FAA’s evacuation standards, which could end up resulting in a demand for new testing and lead to seat size regulation.
The Federal Aviation Administration claims that they watched tests performed by companies like Airbus and Boeing that concluded seat size doesn’t create any issues for emergency evacuations. The one result of all this that might give travelers hope is that now the Department of Transportation will be auditing the FAA’s evacuation standards, which could end up resulting in a demand for new testing and lead to seat size regulation.
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