SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
House passes bill to require minimum standards for airplane seat size, legroom
U.S. House lawmakers passed legislation late Wednesday [October 3] that would give federal regulators the authority to set minimum standards for seat size and leg room on flights.
Tucked inside a 2,000-page funding bill is a provision that gives the Federal Aviation Administration a year to establish minimum pitch, width and length on airplane seats to ensure they are safe for passengers. The legislation, which funds the FAA for the next five years, passed 398-23 in the House and now goes to the Senate.
The proposed law is designed to ensure that what have become increasingly cramped planes can be evacuated quickly in an emergency. Current FAA rules require airlines to evacuate in 90 seconds or less.
That policy hasn't been updated significantly in almost two decades. Investigators at the Department of Transportation, which oversees the FAA, said in June that they plan to study whether the FAA is ensuring that today's more crowded aircraft meet federal evacuation standards.
Commercial airplane cabins have become more cramped as airlines fit more seats on board to increase profits and spread out costs among more travelers. Several carriers have reconfigured their planes to not only include more seats but also smaller lavatories in some cases.
Seat pitch, a proxy for legroom, on commercial airplanes measured about 35 inches in the middle of the 20th century, but that's now around 31 inches, according to SeatGuru. Some budget airlines, like Spirit, offer 28 inches of seat pitch.
[...] The bill also requires a government study of whether airlines' shrinking or reducing bathrooms in favor of more seats on board creates problems for passengers accessing lavatories.
Before going to vote, lawmakers scrapped a provision that would determine whether airline fees, such as those to change a travel date, are reasonable.
WATCH: It's not just your eyes. Airline seats really are getting smaller.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by theluggage on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:19PM (1 child)
No, just more proof that the market couldn't find its invisible ass with both invisible hands.
To have "competition" you'd need multiple half-empty planes flying each route so that customers actually had a viable choice.
Even where there is a choice of carriers for a given route, the only thing they'll "compete" on is how many people they can cram on a plane. For every customer that gets fed up and goes to the competition you'll pick up a new one who the competition has pissed off. Most customers will buy on price, timetable and availability - its not like you can easily go and look at the planes to do comparison shopping on seat sizes before you buy. If you're travelling for work you'll probably be obliged to pick the cheapest ticket or used the approved airline (which probably got approved by people who only travel first class, probably at a substantial discount in return for the exclusive livestock transport rights).
Where's the option to pay a bit more for better seats all round? You can pay a substantial premium for better seats for yourself - probably at the expense of others.
That's what you get when the market works...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @06:49PM
Not quite. Air travel is very, very far from a free market. Sure it was all 'deregulated' and stuff way back in the day, but in reality all it really meant was that it was about as deregulated as the NYC cab industry, which is to say not at all.