US Court Won't Require FAA to Make Seat Size Rule
Excerpts from Reuters
Airline passengers who have long felt squished in cramped seats suffered a setback on Friday as a U.S. appeals court refused to order the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to adopt minimum requirements for seat size and spacing.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said an advocacy group, FlyersRights.org, had no right to force the FAA to adopt seating rules because it was not "clear and indisputable" that tight seating, while uncomfortable, was also dangerous.
Congress had in 2018 given the FAA one year to establish minimum seating dimensions including pitch, the distance between seatbacks, that were "necessary" for passenger safety.
No such rules yet exist, though airlines must be able to evacuate passengers within 90 seconds in emergencies. Airline margins could suffer if carriers were forced to reconfigure planes.
Writing for a three-judge panel, Circuit Judge Justin Walker rejected FlyersRights' claims that tight seating materially slowed emergency exits and posed medical risks such as blood clots, saying the FAA had no compelling evidence of either.
"To be sure, many airline seats are uncomfortably small. That is why some passengers pay for wider seats and extra legroom," Walker wrote. "But it is not 'clear and indisputable' that airline seats have become dangerously small.
"Unless they are dangerously small, seat-size regulations are not 'necessary for the safety of passengers,'" he added.
FlyersRights Comment
The decision substitutes the word “if” for the word “and” in the statute that commanded the FAA to issue minimum seat size dimensions by Oct 2019.
The law does not say that FAA can refuse to issue minimum seat size IF it feels that current shrunken seats are not unsafe. FAA uses its own narrow definition of safety restricted to emergency evacuation and excludes all health risks and personal privacy violations.
This decision unfortunately ignores a plain language reading of the seat statute as well as the clear statutory intent. The 2018 law was enacted borne of frustration by FAAs decades long absolute refusal to set any seat standards. This allowed airlines to shrink seats without limit while passenger size increased to the point that less than half the adult population can fit into economy seating, without encroaching on their neighbor or into the aisle and/or suffering health risks.
Unless Congress acts to remove any shred of ambiguity or the FAA or DOT has a change of policy, passengers can expect seats to continue to shrink to torture class, so most passengers will face increased health risks, be forced to pay much higher airfares or not fly at all.
