The Federal Aviation Administration asked the public for feedback on plane seat sizes, and passengers have flooded the government agency with more than 26,000 submissions.
The FAA has no rule set for how big or how small an airplane’s passenger seat can be, but was asking for input that could make the agency set seat standards that would ensure a safe evacuation in an emergency, CBS News reported.
The responses all have the same message — that the seats are too small.
Respondents told the FAA that seat spaces are shrinking and that they doubt that because of how close the seats are, they could safely and quickly leave their seats in case of emergency.
Many airlines have shrunk seats from 18.5 to 17 inches. Seat pitch, or the distance between one point of a seat to the same point on the seat in front of or behind, has shrunk from 35 to 31 inches on average, with some airlines setting it at 28 inches, Reuters reported in September.
The FAA requires airlines to evacuate passengers within 90 seconds.
Tiffany Farrell told the FAA that she’s instructed her children to do whatever they have to if they are forced to evacuate and their exit from their row is blocked by someone.
“As the years have gone by and the seats have gotten smaller and smaller, I have definitely been in situations with my kids where I’ve told them that if there was an emergency they would have to feel OK leaping over rows of seats instead of exiting along an aisle because a passenger was literally wedged into an aisle seat blocking our egress,” Farrell wrote in her comment to the FAA.
Others said they feel like a sardine and that comfort should not be reserved for the wealthy.
The FAA received over 200 comments with the word “torture” when describing how little space is available, CBS News reported.
To read some of the more than 26,000 comments, visit the regulations.gov website.
Some of the issues are not only the seats shrinking, but Americans growing.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 40% of the American adult population is considered obese.
The FAA was directed by lawmakers to set seat sizes for passenger safety, but the FAA found that seat size and pitch did not impact safety in tests conducted in 2019 and 2020, The Washington Post reported.
Airlines for America, an industry trade group, says that seat size does not impact safety as found in several studies, and stresses that no new or updated regulations are needed.
The FAA said in 2018 that it was not planning to regulate seat sizes which, if it would, could impact airlines’ profits because they may have to reallocate space and eliminate seats, Reuters reported.