FAA Buried In Airline Seat Size Comments

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More than 26,000 people responded to the FAA’s request for comments on the ever diminishing airline seat and they were pretty much unanimous. In fact, at least 200 commenters described airline travel as “torture” because of the seats. From claimed injuries to class warfare to economic discrimination, the litany of horrors tied to seat dimensions was as acrimonious as it was comprehensive. That wasn’t actually the question, however.

The agency’s stated purpose for the comment document was to determine at what dimension does a seat become an impediment to an emergency evacuation. Many of those who addressed that topic said the point has already passed. Some airlines have seat widths of 17 inches with pitches (the distance between the same point on seats in adjacent rows) down to 31 inches. Many respondents said unfolding themselves from the diminishing real estate they’re being assigned will slow their evacuation and reduce safety. Others said the cramped quarters were unhealthy, particularly for those with chronic medical issues. The agency hasn’t said what it’s going to do with the data.

Russ Niles
Russ Niles is Editor-in-Chief of AVweb. He has been a pilot for 30 years and joined AVweb 22 years ago. He and his wife Marni live in southern British Columbia where they also operate a small winery.

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21 COMMENTS

  1. As an airline pilot that commutes to work every week from Florida to NYC I would LOVE to see more room in back. If all that’s left is a middle seat in coach I’ll take the cockpit jumpseat thank you (unless that middle seat is between the Swedish bikini team). But it needs to be mandated by the FAA or it will NEVER happen. I know, I know……you’re thinking “Hey why doesn’t one airline just do this out of the goodness of their hearts ? unfortunately the profit margins are razor thin and the bean counters back at HQ would put any CEO up for a psychiatric exam if ever he/she were to pull revenue generating seats off an airplane to create a little extra breathing room.

    Here’s a great example and fun fact – normally you can tell an Airbus 319 from a 320 by counting the overwing exit doors. 319s have but one and 320s have two……..except Allegiant Airlines. They CRAM so many people on their 319s the FAA requires an extra overwing exit door. They are probably the only carrier in the world that operates 319s with two overwing exit doors. Imagine what a special hell riding on them must be if you’re a big person. Here’s another fun fact – Frontier Airlines CRAMS two more people on to their narrow body 321s than United Airlines puts on their wide body 787-8 !

    People the bottom line is simple – keep your cards and letters coming into the FAA on this subject or else we’ll never see more room in back of airliners and chiropractors and massage therapists are the only people that will benefit.

    • You have a unique perspective and i think we all understand the revenue model. I do not believe the FAA will mandate seat width and pitch until there is a incident and the passengers cannot get off the air frame within the regulated time. Unfortunately it will require passenger lives or serious injuries and lawsuits to effect any real change. The traveling public has chosen, they will endure any amount of discomfort or indignity for a cheap fare. Like it or not the airlines do not make any money from hauling self loading freight, their frequent flyer programs, branded credit card fees and cash management is where the real profit is made. The airline ticket is just a way to generate dollars to keep the financial business raking in billions.

  2. I fly, as a passenger, two, three, four or more legs a week for my Real Job…and I’m of nominal height and weight for a US male…and it’s gotten to the point that I feel it’s dangerous. While I have to travel for my job (and can’t wait to retire next year so I don’t have to unless I want to subject myself to the indignity and abuse of commercial flying), I can’t help but wonder HOW in the hell you’re going to evacuate this cigar tube when you can’t even stand up straight and have to twist yourself into a pretzel to move from seat A to the aisle, let alone doing it during a panic situation when every Karen’s going to want to try and pull their 45 lb roll-on out of the overhead.

    I get the revenue enhancement part of cramming as many souls onboard as you possibly can, but at some point, to what end? If given a choice within a 500 – 1000 mile radius, and I’m not on a tight schedule, I’ll drive if I have the time, fly myself (a 172 does just fine), or, as an absolute last resort, stand in line for my group to board. But that is only as a last resort.

  3. What I’ve never understood is how seats are allegedly getting *narrower* when it’s the same number of seats in the same size fuselage. The aisle sure isn’t getting wider.

    Pitch, yes–of course that’s going down. But it just confuses the issue when these discussions talk about widths, which clearly aren’t likely to change.

    • Used to be, there was a folding armrest so your legs actually did have more room beneath it. Now, it’s usually a hard wall there. Also, the people are getting taller and fatter, so there is more human in the space from self and others.

      Finally, as pitch declines people perceive less space all around. You get a similar effect in long bodied Mooneys where the front seats have tons of room in length and width, but because of the small windows and the effort to get in, people will swear it’s narrower than other planes which it is measurably wider than. The brain overlays a pattern on things, and then sees confirmation of that pattern. It’s some sort of survival tool we evolved with.

  4. Back in the nineties, I had a 1960 C172A, lived on a grass strip west of Baltimore (1W5), and commuted to Silicon Valley for a week about once a month. The trick was that on Sunday evening I flew down to IAD to catch the 6pm UA 747 to SJC, and returned on the red-eye Saturday morning. It was pretty comfortable in the upstairs deck. For east coast trips I flew the 172, with door-to-door times comparable to the commuters, unless there happened to be a non-stop. Even twenty years ago, the seat in an elderly 172 was more comfortable than those in the cigar-tubes.

    I suggest the FAA start with a modern C182 (or Cirrus, or comparable GA seat) and require that no airliner seat be more uncomfortable than that.

  5. Evacuation of a single aisle airliner such as a 737 is not a fast process. People move slowly, and are amazingly unfocused at the task of evacuation. Seat pitch and width play a role, for sure, as getting up and out from a window seat does take time. The certification requirements of 90 seconds, is in my opinion, an order of magnitude shorter than reality. Tell me again how long it took Sully’s passengers to evacuate after ditching in the Hudson river?

    • The certification requirement is 90 seconds WITH HALF of the exits blocked or inoperative. Looking at actual evacuations, the exit restrictions in the rule do seem to align very closely with the surprise factor in real world evacuations. Look at the widebody Airbus that went off the runway in Canada. No advance thought that anything was wrong, so maximum surprise factor. The miracle on the Hudson had more than a minute of gliding flight (i.e. something not normal) before hitting the water. Many of the passengers texted their loved ones on the way down.

  6. A better term is sewer tube not cigar tube.
    Folks are getting fatter, much fatter, and that fact is being ignored by the FAA and the airlines except maybe for consideration of weight and balance issues. There should be an area where first class sized seats are positioned for folks who are simply too big to fit in a regular seat and who occupy parts of adjacent ones. And they should charge more for them and require that those over a certain weight – say 275 lbs must pay extra and sit there instead of punishing all the other normal sized passengers. The airlines are not going to fix any of this. It has to be by FAA regulation. The seats will be a minimum of X distance apart, recline a minimum of Y, and anyone who weighs more that Z shall occupy and pay for larger seats. Period. If the airlines all have to do it then the market will dictate the cost and value. The current situation is out of control and not sustainable. And some people wonder why passengers are more unwieldy and abusive than they used to be. How about a little cause and effect analysis.

  7. We live in a paradoxical world. People’s perceptions are inaccurate. Emotions bias judgment. Nonetheless, the idea of airline travel being the primary travel option is inefficient and costly beyond cash payment. While people fight regulation as some sort of limit of ‘freedom’, the reality is that a regulated system is required for large scale operations. For example, Amazon. For transportation, however, movement takes priority over profit. The FAA needs more funding and partnering with providers to provide the same level of operation that Amazon provides to users of its system.

    • Are you equivocating the management policies of a corporation to the regulation by bureaucracies?

      If so, it doesn’t work on many levels at all. You cannot run a government institution like a business or vice versa. It’s been tried, and, as usual, the bureaucracies simply twisted the intent and applied business thinking to all the wrong parts.

      Strangely though, they both respond well to losing income. What the FAA needs is to lose some parts of itself and a chunk of funding along with having a serious overhaul and house cleaning.

      Just like most of our bureaucracies.

  8. I loved the first comment save for razor thin margins- both Delta and United are raking in record profits. Baggage fees are stupid – due to airline greed they smack you $30-40 per bag. Then at the gate they have the ‘problem’ of overhead space and check the bag for free. A true racket.

    Now, the airlines have never had such luck historically with load factors as they do now primarily due to the gobs of data they mine which makes their pricing models super accurate. Reduced number of flights between city pairs, increased number of seats per plane, and higher load factors. And a nice BS video of how great they are except for the screen is in your nose and you can’t stretch your legs. What a way to fly. I wonder if Ed Bastian rides middle seat in row 28?

  9. The ever-shrinking airline seat is but one example of the financial pressure placed on corporate executives that work for a company with publicly traded stock. There are many other examples of a similar nature outside the airline industry.

    Once a company starts trading stock publicly, their mind set is singularly focused on making money. The executives at the airlines have a fiduciary responsibility to fill airliners with as many people as possible. This is not as bad as it can get. We will reach a point where all airline passengers will be standing up, and the airlines will be able to confidently tell the FAA that passengers can evacuate faster when they are already on their feet.

    I don’t like saying it, but I think the first commenter has it right. This will only change due to an FAA mandate giving the passengers more room. (And no, that commenter’s opinion is NOT unique). Yes, such a mandate will increase ticket prices. No, I don’t like. Yes, I can live with it. Yes I will fly my own plane more, and drive more. Yes, I will probably travel less, and closer to home. And yes, I will probably blame the government for the higher airline ticket prices, but that is an opinion I will keep to myself since I will be enjoying the extra leg room while smiling on the inside. Those are tradeoffs this reader is willing to accept.

    • It has not been my experience that companies as large as airlines are run by people single focused on profits.

      When all the players in an industry are behaving similarly, it’s generally not a sign of the failure of markets or capitalism, on the contrary, it’s evidence of a bad regulatory regime. Most often, competitive forces are getting squashed.

      The first job of regulators should be to prevent market capture by the existing players, but instead it’s generally easier for the regulators and legislators to decrease competition in pursuit of their own goals.

      The easy solution is to mandate minimums which all the players will then end up at. It might be better to figure out why none of the players who tried offering more room found it was good business to buck the trend. Even SWA now looks a whole lot like the other airlines.

  10. Ever-shrinking seat, ever expanding average American. With how fat people are getting and how slow and laborious the process of those fat people getting into and out of the economy seats is during normal opperation, I wouldn’t be surprised if 100% of airliner evacuation time tests were gamed in some way and thus basically fraudulent. I don’t see this as a matter of opinion, with the average American being obese by the standards of past, it’s just common sense that the historically small width and pitch will combine with the historically corpulent passengers to slow things down in an emergency.

  11. I traveled on airlines a lot for business before I retired. Airlines sure have changed in the last 40+ years. Some changes were good; eliminating smoking on airlines, some not so good, seat comfort and spacing in coach. We miss the old Midwest Express airline based in Milwaukee, their airplanes were first class seating throughout.
    We now avoid flying on the airlines as much as possible. Dealing with the TSA, an over abundance of rude obnoxious people, and uncomfortable seats, we just don’t want the hassle or abuse. I would rather drive or fly myself.

    When we do fly on an airline we pay extra for early boarding to get a bulkhead seat (SWA) or book far enough in advance and pay extra to select a bulkhead seat. My wife and I are not big, she’s had a knee replacement and it’s difficult for her to get in/out of a seat being they are so close together.

    With quick egress being the goal the FAA needs to mandate seat spacing large enough for a person to actually stand up, this would allow for passengers to get out quickly in an emergency. I am not a fan of government mandates but if the FAA doesn’t mandate more space between seats the airlines won’t increase it on their own.
    Yes ticket prices would go up, and maybe they should. I don’t base my airline choice solely on price, there are many factors, safety and comfort being high on the list. I avoid budget airlines altogether.
    Airline travel used to be a big part of the travel experience, now it’s a hassle at best, why make it worse being squeezed into an uncomfortable seat.

  12. If I owned an airline…… ✈️ 💺
    Set pricing for empty middle seats and give discounts to group travel and/or family that chooses to use the middle seat without inconveniencing others. If the airline needs to use the middle seat because of over booking or whatever offer half-off to both inconvenienced volunteering passengers during boarding.
    Your airline will be the most popular, have the best reviews and will increase air travel. All it takes is a policy change. You would be satisfying business, group and family travel without changing the physical seat configuration. This would also be an easy website software change. The passenger would have to reserve all three seats at the same time or only be able to reserve every other seat. Charge 25 percent more then the cattle car competitor and see how things workout. Just do it on a couple runs… experiment.

    • Airline marketing staff, here’s a slogan idea:
      … our price guarantees two armrest, share an armrest pay less.

  13. Seat size has become a safety issue… try getting into the proscribed crash position with your head between you knees… size restrictions must be made for safety, even if they have to raise seat prices outside the ghetto trash price range.
    Might make riding in the cabin safer with double the price… fewer nut balls. I would pay more to not have crazy ghetto trash on the plane.

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