If an airplane has to be evacuated, the Federal Aviation Administration says all passengers must be capable of getting outwithin 90 seconds.
But critics say the agency’s testing standards have not kept pace with the shrinking size of airplane seats — which means more people jammed into the cabin — or the changing composition of the flying public.
“This is ridiculous. This is not how we travel today,” said U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) in an interview.
Duckworth argues the FAA’s current tests fail to take real world conditions into consideration.
“They did not mimic the seat density of a modern aircraft. They had no carry-on baggage. They had nobody over the age of 60 and nobody under the age of 18,” said Duckworth, a former Army helicopter pilot who lost both her legs in the Iraq war.
“They didn’t have anybody with a disability. Of course they were able to evacuate the aircraft in 90 seconds,” she said.
Imagine if they forced planes to have reasonable seats again! I’d love to be able to sit without my knees jammed in the seat in front of me.
I’m not even that tall. My father-in-law literally can’t fit in a regular seat due to his height.
Bad news is us tall guys get bruised knees from the seats. Good news is we get to watch everything everyone is doing on the screens in front of us. I watched like ten movies at once on the last flight I was on.
It’s really one of the only benefits I have by being a small man. Economy isn’t that bad for me
You can probably do way more pull-ups than me (a tall man), so that’s a plus.
lol yeah probably true, but I also do martial arts and workout a lot, so I can probably do more pull ups than most people, even short kings
Imagine if the institutions that are meant to oversee and regulate industries for our safety hadn’t been gutted and neutered by capitalists.
Conservative voters get conservative solutions.
I’m with Duckworth that the evacuation standards should take those things into account, but it gets complicated quickly. Where should people with diabilities be seated? They are frequently at the front, but not always. How would you even simulate an average or ‘normal’ amount of disabilities?
But it doesn’t require any specific portion of specific types of passengers.
Minimum seat and row sizes to allow space to allow easier assistance with evacuation would address a lot of those situations. Being packed in makes helping someone with a physical issue or an injury easier far more difficult, even more than the impact on able bodied people trying to squeeze out more people than the plane was designed for. If rows were required to have plenty of space in front of the seat it would make space available to assist the known number of people that aren’t able to get themselves out on their own. Plus it would make it easier to get out the fewer number of able bodied people faster and it would be more comfortable to fly. Win, win for everyone and safety!
You monster! Think what that would do to the shareholder’s value!
What I’m wondering is, how many deaths are attributable to slow evacuation? Usually, you only hear about the great catastrophies where the entire plan crashes into a mountain and evacuation was never an option.
But how many accidents cause a situation where quick emergency evacuations are actually needed? I have absolutely no intuition about that.
The flight polited by Captain Sully that crashed in a river would be the type of crash that has a timeline due to the plane sinking. Another situation with a need for a fast evacuation is a fire. Both are fairly rare because of all of the other safety measures taken when a metal tube filled with fuel takes off and lands over water.
People dying in either scenario because of a pursuit of profits would be terrible.
how many deaths are attributable to slow evacuation
You mean like the Station Fire?
The easy answer to the disabled question is the row right behind the first class bulkhead. Well, removing that row and using the second row for the disabled.
Ok, now imagine there are more people than fit in one row on the same flight. Or a group of elderly people with mobility issues that are not ‘disabled’.
Also people with back problems, that have a hard time squeezing out of tight rows. Pregnant people 9 months along. Someone who just had leg surgery. Or a group of 30 people with mobility issues who are all going to a conference about mobility issues.
One row is not enough. They could sacrifice 10% of rows and give all of the other rows a significantly more space on most planes.
They can just add a lever that dumps everyone out the bottom. Problem solved.
“Why do we even have that lever?!”
Do you want everyone off the plane in 90 seconds or not?
Pretty sure Boeing has this feature.
like any of these assholes live in the real world
Wait, why does carryon baggage matter? In an emergency, you leave it behind.
If it’s not shoved under the seat in front of you properly it can be a tripping hazard and slow things down, plus if the overhead bins don’t stay latched well because they weren’t maintained well (which is a thing I’ve seen often) then any emergency could possibly have thrown that into the aisle.
I dunno, it makes sense to at least look at it further.
With how overstuffed the interior of planes has become since the check-bag fees got so high, I think it would silly not to simulate that much more stuff. Empty bags in all the overheads and stuffed bags under every seat.
