An appellate court ruling last year ordering the FAA to
review seat sizes and the distance between rows on commercial planes won't
result in the agency setting new standards.
In a July 2 letter to the consumer advocacy group Flyers
Rights, which had filed a lawsuit that called on the FAA to review the impact that
tighter aircraft configurations have on evacuation times, the agency said that
after conducting a new review on the issue, it has concluded evacuation
efficiency is constrained by emergency exits, not the density of seats.
"The time it takes passengers to get out of their
seats, even if those seats are relatively narrow and close together, is less
than the time it takes for the emergency exits to begin functioning and for the
line that begins forming in the aisle to clear," wrote Dorenda Baker, the
FAA's executive director for aircraft certification service. "This is
demonstrated during evacuation tests."
Under FAA rules, aircraft must be able to be evacuated in 90
seconds or less.
As part of its ruling last summer, the District of Columbia
Circuit Court of Appeals objected to the FAA practice of not releasing
evacuation tests conducted by aircraft manufacturers in order to protect the
proprietary information of those manufacturers.
As part of its response to the court ruling this week, the
FAA posted videos in the public docket of safety evacuations conducted by
Airbus, Embraer and Boeing. The videos show the evacuation test participants
clearing their seats, but then facing a bottleneck in the aisles as they await
exit. Only the Embraer video, however, shows the full evacuation. The Airbus
and Boeing videos are truncated.
The agency also posted statements to the public docket from
aircraft manufacturers and from an FAA safety regulatory specialist asserting
that tests show aircraft, even with tight configurations, are successfully
evacuated within 90 seconds. The FAA didn't release the actual evacuation test
results, saying that it typically doesn't retain such records.
In a statement on its blog Thursday, Flyers Rights suggested
the FAA should produce more evidence.
"So, a few
videos plus a sworn affidavit by a senior FAA technical official was all that
the evidence the agency provided," the blog says. "Conversely, while
seats have gotten smaller, the size of Americans have gotten larger."
The FAA's announcement this week doesn't necessarily put the
issue of new regulations related to seat size to bed. Last month, the Department of Transportation's Office of the Inspector
General announced that it has begun an audit into the FAA's oversight of
aircraft evacuation procedures.
In addition, the House version of this year's FAA
reauthorization bill, which passed out of the chamber in April, would direct
the FAA to set minimum standards for the space between aircraft rows and seat width within a year. The Senate has not yet passed a companion FAA
reauthorization bill.