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Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy.</s>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. aviation authorities were ordered back to the drawing board on Friday to solve what a federal appeals judge called “The Case of the Incredible Shrinking Airline Seat.”

A woman uses her laptop on a flight out of John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport in New York, U.S., May 26, 2017. Picture taken May 26, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

Judge Patricia Millett told the Federal Aviation Administration to take another look at an advocacy group’s assertion that shrinking airline seats are imperiling passenger safety.

The judge rejected the FAA’s argument that seat size was unimportant to getting off the plane in an emergency.

“That makes no sense,” she wrote for the three-judge panel, likening the rationale to doing “a study on tooth decay that only recorded participants’ sugar consumption” but did not look at brushing and flossing.

All three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed the FAA must conduct a new review of the request for regulations setting a minimum airline seat size, but Judge Judith Rogers dissented from part of the court’s rationale.

Airline seats have steadily decreased in size over the last several decades. Economy-class seat pitch has decreased from an average of 35 inches (89 cm) in the 1970s to 31 inches (79 cm), and in some airplanes to 28 inches (71 cm).

Average seat width has narrowed from about 18 inches (46 cm)to 16.5 inches (42 cm) over the last decade.

Critics accuse the airlines of being more interested in profit than passenger health and safety.

FAA spokesman Greg Martin wrote in an e-mail the agency “does consider seat pitch in testing and assessing the safe evacuation of commercial, passenger aircraft. We are studying the ruling carefully and any potential actions we may take to address the court’s findings.”

An airline trade group declined to comment.

Seat pitch is the distance from one seat to the same spot on the one in front or behind.

The ruling was limited to the question of whether smaller seats and larger passengers could have an impact on emergency egress. It did not require the FAA to look at the impact on comfort and health.

A U.S. House of Representatives bill under consideration would require the FAA to set minimum seat sizes on U.S. airlines and a minimum distance between rows to “protect the safety and health of airline passengers.”

Last month American Airlines Group Inc said it would reduce leg room by one inch to 30 inches instead of two as originally planned on some seats in its Boeing 737 MAX jets.

United Airlines President Scott Kirby told a congressional hearing in May the airline had yet to decide whether to cut pitch to 29 inches in some seats. Nearly all United seats have at least 31 inches of pitch.</s>US aviation authorities were ordered back to the drawing board on Friday to solve what a federal appeals judge called 'The Case of the Incredible Shrinking Airline Seat.'

Judge Patricia Millett told the Federal Aviation Administration to take another look at an advocacy group's assertion that shrinking airline seats are imperiling passenger safety.

The judge rejected the FAA's argument that seat size was unimportant to exiting the plane in an emergency.

'That makes no sense,' she wrote for the three-judge panel, likening the rationale to doing 'a study on tooth decay that only recorded participants' sugar consumption' but did not look at brushing and flossing.

Judge Millett also noted that, 'As many have no doubt noticed, aircraft seats and the spacing between them have been getting smaller and smaller, while American passengers have been growing in size.'

All three judges on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed the FAA must conduct a new review of the request for regulations setting a minimum airline seat size.

However, Judge Judith Rogers dissented from part of the court's rationale.

Airline seats have steadily decreased in size and pitch over the last several decades.

In the 1970s, economy-class seat pitch — defined as the distance from one seat to the same spot on the one in front or behind — was an average of 35 inches (89 cm). Since then, it has decreased to 31 inches (79 cm), and in some airplanes to 28 inches (71 cm).

Meanwhile, over the last decade, average seat width has narrowed from about 18 inches (46 cm) to 16.5 inches (42 cm).

Critics accuse the airlines of being more interested in profit than passenger health and safety.

FAA spokesman Greg Martin wrote in an e-mail the agency 'does consider seat pitch in testing and assessing the safe evacuation of commercial, passenger aircraft. We are studying the ruling carefully and any potential actions we may take to address the court´s findings.'

The ruling was limited to the question of whether smaller seats and larger passengers could have an impact on emergency egress. It did not require the FAA to look at the impact on comfort and health.

A US House of Representatives bill under consideration would require the FAA to set minimum seat sizes on US airlines and a minimum distance between rows to 'protect the safety and health of airline passengers.'

Last month American Airlines Group Inc said it would reduce leg room by one inch, down to 30 inches, instead of by the two inches it had originally planned to do on some seats in its Boeing 737 MAX jets.

United Airlines President Scott Kirby told a congressional hearing in May the airline had yet to decide whether to cut pitch to 29 inches in some seats. Nearly all United seats have at least 31 inches of pitch.

According to Bloomberg, US regulations currently require that plane manufacturers can prove that a jet at capacity can be evacuated within 90 seconds, even though half the exits are blocked and there are low lighting conditions.</s>An appeals court panel said Friday that federal officials must reconsider their decision not to regulate the size of airline seats as a safety issue.

One of the judges called it “the Case of the Incredible Shrinking Airline Seat.”

The Flyers Rights passenger group challenged the Federal Aviation Administration in court after the agency rejected its request to write rules governing seat size and the distance between rows of seats.

On Friday, a three-judge panel for the federal appeals court in Washington said the FAA had relied on outdated or irrelevant tests and studies before deciding that seat spacing was a matter of comfort, not safety.

The judges sent the issue back to the FAA. They said the agency must come up with a better-reasoned response to the group’s safety concerns.

“We applaud the court’s decision, and the path to larger seats has suddenly become a bit wider,” said Kendall Creighton, a spokeswoman for Flyers Rights.

The passenger group says small seats that are bunched too close together slow down emergency evacuations and raise the danger of travelers developing vein clots.

FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said the agency was considering the ruling and its next steps. He said the FAA considers the spacing between seat rows when testing to make sure that airliners can be evacuated safely.

The airline industry has long opposed the regulation of seat size. Its main U.S. trade group, Airlines for America, declined to comment on the ruling.

Airlines have steadily reduced the space between rows to squeeze in extra seats and make more money. On discount carrier Spirit Airlines, the distance between the headrest of one seat and that of the seat in front of it — a distance called “pitch” — is 28 inches (71 centimeters), which, after accounting for the seat itself, leaves little legroom for the average passenger.

This year, news leaked that American Airlines planned to order new Boeing 737 jets with just 29 inches (74 centimeters) of pitch in the last three rows to make room for an extra row of premium-priced seats toward the front of the plane.

American Airlines CEO Doug Parker said Friday that after objections from customers and flight attendants, the airline backed off. Those rows will have 30 inches (76 centimeters) of pitch — still a tighter fit than the airline’s current planes.

Flyers Rights said that the average seat has gotten narrower too — from 18.5 inches (47 centimeters) a decade ago to about 17 inches (43 centimeters). The group got the judges’ attention.

“This is the Case of the Incredible Shrinking Airline Seat,” Judge Patricia Millett wrote in her ruling. “As many have no doubt noticed, aircraft seats and the spacing between them have been getting smaller and smaller, while American passengers have been growing in size.”

The issue could wind up in Congress. Some lawmakers have proposed legislation to regulate seat size.</s>If you think the government should do something about the cramped legroom on airplanes, you’ve got a friend in a federal appeals court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., on Friday ordered aviation regulators to consider setting minimum standards for the space airlines give passengers.

“This is the Case of the Incredible Shrinking Airline Seat,” Judge Patricia Ann Millett wrote on behalf of the three-judge panel. “As many have no doubt noticed, aircraft seats and the spacing between them have been getting smaller and smaller, while American passengers have been growing in size.”

The court found in favor of Flyers Rights, a nonprofit advocacy group, which had argued that steadily shrinking legroom and seat size created a safety hazard and the Federal Aviation Administration should impose new restrictions.

The issue of airline passenger legroom has boiled over this year as some carriers said they plan to add more seats to planes. American Airlines in May announced it would shrink the space between most rows to 30 inches (76 centimeters) on its newest Boeing Co. 737 Max jetliners, while later dropping a move to cut the distance in some rows to 29 inches in the face of criticism from employees and customers.

Flyers Rights argued that the average seat width has narrowed from approximately 18.5 inches in the early-2000s to 17 inches in the early-to-mid-2010s. In recent decades, the distance between seat rows, known as "seat pitch," has gone from an average of 35 inches to 31 inches, and as low as 28 inches at some airlines, the group said in the suit.

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While the FAA has contended its standards for safely evacuating an aircraft are adequate, U.S. lawmakers have grilled members of the administration and airline executives on the issue at several hearings this year, and some have drafted legislation to address the issue.

The court said the FAA had used "off-point" studies and "undisclosed tests using unknown parameters" to justify its initial refusal to review the rules. "That type of vaporous record will not do," the court said.

The combination of less legroom and larger passengers has created a safety hazard, Flyers Rights argued, making it more difficult to exit a plane in an emergency and heightening the risk of deep vein thrombosis, a potentially fatal condition of blood clots in the legs that has been associated with longer flights.

“We’re really gratified,” Paul Hudson, president of Flyers Rights, said in an interview. "We hope the FAA will now take it up as a proper rulemaking."

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Airlines for America, a trade group for the large U.S. carriers, said in an email it was not involved in the suit and referred to FAA for comment.

The FAA said in an emailed statement that the agency “does consider seat pitch in testing and assessing the safe evacuation of commercial, passenger aircraft. We are studying the ruling carefully and any potential actions we may take to address the court’s findings.”

The long-term impact of the court rules remains unclear. It stopped short of ordering FAA to create new rules, so the agency could conduct a review and decide not to act.

In a statement last May, the agency said it had already conducted evacuation tests on the smaller seat configurations to ensure they are safe. The agency has no rules on seat width or the distance between rows, relying instead on the evacuation standards.

After American’s initial announcement it was shortening the distance between seats, the agency said Boeing in 1998 successfully performed evacuation tests on the 737-400 with seats spaced 28 and 29 inches apart. As a result, the agency had certified up to 189 passengers aboard the 737 Max that American is buying.

Even as emergency evacuations have gotten significantly safer in recent decades, a debate continues to rage on how U.S. and other leading aviation regulators around the world certify the maximum number of passengers allowed on an airliner.

In part because full-scale evacuation tests have resulted in serious injuries, the FAA and other agencies have in some cases allowed manufacturers to substitute computer simulation and more limited tests.

U.S. regulations require that Boeing, Airbus SE and other manufacturers prove that a fully loaded plane can be evacuated within 90 seconds with half the exits blocked and in low lighting conditions.

Hudson, who has served on various FAA advisory panels in recent decades, has argued that the FAA’s requirements aren’t adequate to protect safety.</s>An appeals court panel says federal officials should reconsider whether to regulate the size of airline seats in the name of safety.

One of the judges calls it the case of the incredible shrinking airline seat.

On Friday, a three-judge panel for the federal appeals court in Washington found fault with the word the Federal Aviation Administration did before the agency rejected setting new regulations on seat size.

A passenger group called Flyers Rights challenged the FAA in court, saying cramped planes are a safety hazard and the FAA needs to do something about it.

The FAA says it is studying the ruling.</s>WASHINGTON (CN) – The Federal Aviation Administration must go back to the drawing board to address what one appeals court judge on Friday called “The Case of the Incredible Shrinking Airline Seat.”

In 2015, Paul Hudson, president of consumer advocacy nonprofit the Flyers Rights Education Fund, asked the FAA to issue rules setting minimum size requirements for seats on commercial airlines.

Hudson made the request after noticing that the space between airplane seats, or seat pitch, has drastically decreased over the last several decades. His research determined that economy seat pitch went from 35 inches in the 1970s to as low as 28 inches today, according to a ruling issued Friday by a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit.

Since the 1960s, Hudson claimed, “the average American flyer had grown steadily larger in height and girth.” His group expressed its concern that with a decrease in size of seating, the risk to the health and safety of passengers onboard drastically increased.

From being unable to properly move around in emergency conditions or being squished in a small seat for so long that the threat of fatal blood clots becomes palpable, Hudson argued for regulations and petitioned the FAA for a ban on any further reductions in seat size, width, pitch, padding or aisle width until a final rule is issued.

In 2016, the FAA denied the petition, saying it conducted emergency tests with 28- and 29-inch seat pitches and found no danger.

The agency noted that the nonprofit’s concerns over passenger health were “irrespective of the seat pitch” and that it found problems like fatal blood clots in the leg, also called deep vein thrombosis, to be rare.

“[Deep vein thrombosis] can occur with ‘any long duration seated activity’…and its risks are ‘the same for economy-class and business-class,’” the FAA said in its denial of Flyers Rights’ petition.

But on Friday, the D.C. Circuit knocked back the FAA’s denial and ordered the agency to produce “a properly reasoned disposition of the petition’s safety concerns.”

Writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, U.S. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett – who opened her opinion by calling the dispute “the Case of the Incredible Shrinking Airline Seat” – rejected the FAA’s position that seat size had no effect on deplaning in an emergency.

Millett also noted that the FAA failed to cite any studies or tests to corroborate its decision.

“When the administration responds to a petition for rulemaking that exposes a plausible life and death safety concern, the administration must reasonably address that risk in its response. The administration failed that task here,” the ruling states.

The FAA argued that the omissions in its research on seat dimensions and safety occurred because “seat dimensions are categorically unimportant to emergency egress.”

“That makes no sense,” she wrote, rejecting the FAA’s argument. “Tests generally require a limited number of variables to be workable and verifiable… Take, for example, a study on tooth decay that only recorded participants’ sugar consumption. The study’s silence on the question of brushing and flossing would surely not imply that brushing and flossing have no effect on the risk of getting a cavity.”

Millett was joined on the panel by U.S. Circuit Judges Cornelia Pillard and Judith Rogers.

The FAA did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment.</s>“This is the case of the incredible shrinking airline seat.”

That’s how a federal judge in Washington D.C., Patricia Millet, described the issue in a decision she and two other judges handed down Friday, ordering the Federal Aviation Administration to review seat sizes and legroom on commercial airlines.

Previously, the FAA has refused to mandate how much space airlines must ensure customers have on planes. But the judge’s decision will force the agency to revisit the issue.

The move comes after an advocacy group, Flyers Rights, petitioned the FAA in 2015 to implement new rules to regulate seat space.

The FAA rebuked the effort, so Flyers Rights took its demands to court and won the right to move forward.

The group celebrated the judges’ decision Friday, saying the court “granted Flyers Rights and airline passengers a victory.”

Flyers Rights had said it’s concerned that small airline seats are actually a safety hazard, putting passengers at risk for conditions like deep vein thrombosis. That’s a potentially fatal condition that can cause blood clots in people’s legs.

The group has also argued that airlines may be out of step with the realities of Americans’ needs, particularly in light of climbing obesity rates. Millet agreed.

“As many have no doubt noticed, aircraft seats and the spacing between them have been getting smaller and smaller, while American passengers have been growing in size,” the judge wrote.

Flyers Rights gave the court evidence that the average width of airplane seats has declined from 18.5 inches in the early 2000s, to 17 inches by about 2005. The shrinking seats have been primarily driven by long-haul airliners that added an extra seat in each row.

While seats are shrinking, they’re also squeezing closer together.

The average pitch between seats “has decreased from an average of 35 inches to 31 inches, and in some airplanes has fallen as low as 28 inches,” the decision reads. Seat pitch is a measurement of the distance between one point on a seat to the same point on the seat behind it.

American Airlines highlighted the trend in May, when the company said it planned to cut down the amount of legroom for some its economy class seats on its new Boeing 737s. It rolled back that plan slightly in June, committing to keep all the seats in its main economy class cabin at 30 inches of leg space, which was still down from 31 inches.

Airlines contend that increasing the number of seats on an airplane is good for both the bottom line of the carrier and a traveler’s wallet. By spreading its costs to operate a flight over a larger number of seats on the same size plane, the airline can offer lower fares and operate more efficiently by flying fewer flights.

The tightest squeezes come on bargain carriers like Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines — both of which truncated seats to just 28-inches apart.

By comparison, economy class rows on Delta and United are spaced between 30 and 31 inches, while JetBlue, Southwest and Alaska have between 31 and 33 inches.

In March, Congress once again considered measures that would have established a minimum airplane seat width and legroom distance. But the Senate rejected the plan in April.

An FAA regulation would bypass the need for Congress to act.

No aviation regulator in any country has established minimum seat width or pitch requirements.

The FAA does regulate significant parts of an airplane cabin, including the safe design of each seat and its ability to withstand a high impact landing or crash. The agency so far has allowed airlines to determine how to size and space their seats, but any arrangement of an airline cabin must allow all the passengers and crew to evacuate within 90 seconds.

The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.</s>Airlines might have to reverse course on those tiny seats.

“This is the case of the incredible shrinking airline seat,” Judge Patricia Millett wrote in her opinion. “As the average American gets bigger, seats are getting much smaller.”

The nonprofit Flyers Rights Education Fund provided the court evidence that the distance between most economy seats has gone from 35 inches to 31, and some airlines go as small as 28 inches. And on top of that, seat width has gone down 1.5 inches since the early 2000s.

The advocacy group argued that those cramped conditions are not only unhealthy, they also pose safety issues during emergency exit situations.

“Accordingly, when the Administration responds to a petition for rulemaking that exposes a plausible life-and-death safety concern, the Administration must reasonably address that risk in its response,” the court opinion stated. “The Administration failed that task here.”

Flyers Rights originally petitioned the FAA in 2015, and the regulation committee dismissed the claims without providing studies that take in passenger and seat sizes into consideration.

The court isn’t demanding a seat requirement, but it adds to the building momentum for a minimum size.

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) has put forth a second attempt to pass a bill, aptly nicknamed the SEAT Act, to regulate seat and legroom on flights. The Seat Egress in Air Travel Act has languished in the Aviation Subcommittee since March, and Cohen hopes to attach his proposal to a bill to renew the FAA’s authority on Sept. 30.</s>The court found in favor of Flyers Rights, a nonprofit advocacy group, which had argued that steadily shrinking legroom and seat size created a safety hazard and that the Federal Aviation Administration should impose new restrictions.

If you think the government should do something about the cramped legroom on airplanes, you’ve got a friend in a federal court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., on Friday ordered aviation regulators to consider setting minimum standards for the space airlines give passengers.

“This is the Case of the Incredible Shrinking Airline Seat,” Judge Patricia Ann Millett wrote on behalf of the three-judge panel. “As many have no doubt noticed, aircraft seats and the spacing between them have been getting smaller and smaller, while American passengers have been growing in size.”

The court found in favor of Flyers Rights, a nonprofit advocacy group, which had argued that steadily shrinking legroom and seat size created a safety hazard and that the Federal Aviation Administration should impose new restrictions.

The issue of airline-passenger legroom has boiled over this year as some carriers said they plan to add more seats to planes. American Airlines in May announced it would shrink the space between most rows to 30 inches on its newest Boeing 737 MAX jetliners, while later dropping a move to cut the distance in some rows to 29 inches in the face of criticism from employees and customers.

Flyers Rights argued that the average seat width has narrowed from approximately 18.5 inches in the early-2000s to 17 inches in the early to mid-2010s. In recent decades, the distance between seat rows, known as “seat pitch,” has gone from an average of 35 inches to 31 inches, and as low as 28 inches at some airlines, the group said in the suit.

While the FAA has contended its standards for safely evacuating an aircraft are adequate, U.S. lawmakers have grilled members of the administration and airline executives on the issue at several hearings this year, and some have drafted legislation to address the issue.

The court said the FAA had used “off-point” studies and “undisclosed tests using unknown parameters” to justify its initial refusal to review the rules. “That type of vaporous record will not do,” the court said.

The combination of less legroom and larger passengers has created a safety hazard, Flyers Rights argued, making it more difficult to exit a plane in an emergency and heightening the risk of deep vein thrombosis, a potentially fatal condition of blood clots in the legs that has been associated with longer flights.

“We’re really gratified,” Paul Hudson, president of Flyers Rights, said in an interview. “We hope the FAA will now take it up as a proper rulemaking.”

The FAA said in an emailed statement that the agency “does consider seat pitch in testing and assessing the safe evacuation of commercial, passenger aircraft. We are studying the ruling carefully and any potential actions we may take to address the court’s findings.”

The long-term impact of the court rules remains unclear. It stopped short of ordering the FAA to create new rules, so the agency could conduct a review and decide not to act.

In a statement last May, the agency said it had already conducted evacuation tests on the smaller-seat configurations to ensure they are safe. The agency has no rules on seat width or the distance between rows, relying instead on the evacuation standards.

After American’s initial announcement it was shortening the distance between seats, the agency said Boeing in 1998 successfully performed evacuation tests on the 737-400 with seats spaced 28 and 29 inches apart. As a result, the agency had certified up to 189 passengers aboard the 737 MAX that American is buying.
U.S. Appeals Court Judge Patricia Millett rejects the Federal Aviation Administration argument that seat size is unimportant when passengers exit a plane in an emergency, and orders the FAA to set minimum standards for the space airlines give passengers.