FAA Says Tighter Airline Cabins Still Don’t Pose Evacuation Risk

The Federal Aviation Administration says the results of a three-month study it conducted on evacuation times of airplanes during an emergency were not impeded by airlines that squeezed in more seating for increased revenue.

But at least one U.S. Congressman takes exception to that.

The FAA study – conducted from November 2019 to January 2020, but only released last week – found that no extra risk was imposed to the safety of 99 percent of the American population, according to our sister publication Travel Weekly.

The testing was not done using senior citizens, children or the disabled.

As a result, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) said in a statement that the FAA’s findings were a “foregone conclusion the airline industry dictated. The flying public cannot rely on the results of this study nor should seat sizes be based solely on the study’s results. I look forward to participating in the FAA’s forthcoming public comment period and hope the input is taken seriously before the FAA makes its final determination on minimum seat dimensions that are necessary to ensure passenger safety.”

Federal law requires that aircraft evacuations take less than 90 seconds and, apparently, that standard was met.

FAA Administrator Steve Dickson, who stepped down on March 31, admitted in his own statement to Congress that the results provided “useful, but not necessarily definitive information, regarding the effects of seat dimensions on safe evacuations for all populations.”

The FAA plans to conduct a review to set minimum standards for seat width and the space between rows on commercial aircraft.

“The FAA is the global gold standard for aviation safety and we appreciate their comprehensive review of existing aircraft standards, which affirmed the highest level of safety onboard our nation’s commercial airlines,” the lobby group Airlines For America said in a prepared statement.