FAA declines to regulate seat size on aircrafts

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) this week said it will not regulate the size of seats on aircrafts.

The agency announced its decision in a Monday letter to the group FlyersRights, which previously filed a rulemaking petition.

“While your petition asserts that seat width and pitch, in conjunction with passenger size, raise a safety concern, the FAA has no evidence that there is an immediate safety issue necessitating rulemaking at this time,” the letter reads.

{mosads}The document, which is addressed to the president of FlyersRights, said the agency “has no evidence that current seat sizes are a factor in evacuation speed.”

The FAA said there is no indication that a bigger passenger would take more than several seconds to get up from his or her seat.

“The reason that seat width and pitch, even in combination with increasing passenger size, do not hamper the speed of an evacuation is the timeline and sequence of the evacuation,” the letter says.

The agency said it has a three-pronged approach to evaluating rulemaking petitions, including safety concerns, FAA resources, and the importance of the agency’s other matters.

Despite refusing to regulate seat size at this time, the FAA said it will save the FlyersRights petition in its database for potential future evaluations.