Flying sucks. From the invasive TSA searches to the overpriced crappy food in the terminals, there’s a lot of the flying experience to complain about. Unless you’re among the lucky few to fly first class, it has been getting even worse over the years thanks to shrinking seat sizes on planes. Now, thanks to a recent federal court ruling, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has to address a petition from a consumer advocacy group fighting for seat size regulations. The fight has been called the case of the “incredible shrinking airline seat.” WaPo reports:
In a fiery ruling on Friday, an appeals court judge in Washington ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to look into it what she called “the Case of the Incredible Shrinking Airline Seat.”
Judge Patricia Millett upbraided the FAA for “vacuous” and “vaporous” evidence that the agency previously used to argue that diminishing leg room was not a problem — or at least not its problem.
The group, Flyers Rights, filed a petition to the FAA in 2015 over concerns about the looming “race to the bottom” among airlines with seat sizes. The FAA declined to issue any minimums, saying it isn’t their responsibility. It looks like the courts may disagree, according to the New York Times:
The court found that the petition, filed in 2015 by Flyers Rights, a consumer advocacy group, had identified a genuine safety issue caused by the combination of shrinking seats and larger passengers. The petition said the reduced space could make it difficult for passengers to evacuate in emergencies.
The petition said the distance between seats from row to row had decreased to an average of 31 inches from an average of 35 inches and that the average seat width had narrowed by about an inch and a half since the early 2000s.
The petition also noted the average American had grown significantly larger.
It’s not hard to imagine the potential safety hazard of having increasingly bigger people squeezing into smaller seats. And Judge Mellett recognized that.
Federal regulations require that large aircrafts be capable of evacuation within 90 seconds and that tests take place to ensure compliance. Instead, Judge Millett wrote, the FAA relied on outdated studies from a time when seats were more spacious and Americans were smaller. It also implied in its argument that seat width and pitch are irrelevant to egress speed. “As a matter of basic physics,” she countered, “at some point seat and passenger dimensions would become so squeezed as to impede the ability of passengers to extricate themselves from their seats and get over to an aisle”.
The issue was sent back to the FAA for further review. If the agency decides once again to deny the petition’s request, it must provide more adequate justification for doing so.
Now the FAA will actually have to put a little effort into their defense. In the ruling, the agency was slammed for simply using bad research that wouldn’t pass the standards of any high school teacher. They cited old studies from times when seats were larger. They referred to internal reports that they refused to share with the court. Fortunately, Judge Millett wasn’t having any of it.
Other efforts to impose minimum seat sizes on planes have been thwarted before thanks to powerful airline lobbyists, the Independent writes.
“The airlines have a very effective lobbying effort on Capitol Hill,” he said. “So, even though the people in Congress are aware of the problem, on the one hand they’re being pressured by their constituents to go one way, and on the other hand they’re getting pressured by the airlines.”
The airline industry as a whole spends millions of dollars a year lobbying the federal government on a variety of issues. So far in 2017, the industry has spent $14 million lobbying in Washington, and spent nearly $27.4 million lobbying in 2016, according to data from the Centre for Responsive Politics.
Check out a PDF of the full ruling here.