Airline seats could get bigger to accommodate larger travelers

It seems incongruous: as people have gotten larger, airline seats have shrunk smaller. Advocates for bigger seats on planes like to think that they now have a chance to reverse that trend. Earlier in August, the US FAA sought comments on “minimum seat dimensions necessary for safety of air passengers.” The regulator will accept responses for 90 days, or until November 1. The FAA has not previously considered the issue of whether seats have become too small for the average passenger. Rather, it has focused on the more limited question of whether seats impede aircraft evacuations, which are required to take 90 seconds or less. “Their position has been consistent,” said Paul Hudson, president of FlyersRights, an airline passenger advocacy group. “The way they define safety, narrowly, is to include only emergency evacuation, and they don’t think emergency evacuation is affected by seat size. They don’t include any health or comfort issues.” While the FAA currently has no specific standards for seat pitch, the distance between the front of the seat and the back of the one in front of it, and width, it is expected to at least consider them. In 2018, as part of FAA funding process, the US Congress ordered the agency to establish minimum dimensions for airline seats within a year. A section of the 2018 FAA Reauthorization Act directed the agency “to issue, after notice and comment, such rules as necessary for the safety of passengers with regard to the minimum dimensions, including seat pitch, width, and length, of passenger seats on aircraft.” FlyersRights has been advocating in the courts for an established minimum seat size since 2015.<br/>