![\"\"](\"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/breyault.jpg\")
Last month, I had the pleasure of\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>testifying<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>before the House Aviation Subcommittee on the implementation of the Federal Aviation Administration\u2019s 2018 reauthorization bill. My testimony touched on many of the pressing consumer protection priorities for airline passengers teed up by the 2016 and 2018 FAA reauthorization bills.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
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The big<\/span>\u00a0news coming out of that hearing, however, was FAA Deputy Administrator Daniel Elwell announcing that the FAA will this November conduct its first evacuation tests with live participants in two decades. While this may sound like\u00a0<\/span>the kind of\u00a0<\/span>announcement<\/span>\u00a0only politicos should care about<\/span>, it\u2019s\u00a0actually a\u00a0<\/span>very big deal<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>for anyone who flies<\/span>.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Why is that, you may ask?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n FAA regulations require that the \u201cmaximum capacity\u201d of an aircraft must be able to be evacuated in less than 90 seconds in an emergency. The analogy is to the \u201cmaximum capacity\u201d signs you may have seen in conference rooms, hotels, or other public spaces. Since the 1990\u2019s, airlines have gotten fuller, seats have gotten smaller, and more bags and support animals have been brought into the cabin. Despite these changes, FAA has not updated its evacuation standards and has been content to allow airlines to self-certify that they can meet the 90-second threshold, largely based on computer simulations.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This all changed last July when Congress passed the\u00a0<\/span>2018 FAA\u00a0<\/span>R<\/span>eauthorization\u00a0<\/span>A<\/span>ct<\/span><\/a>\u00a0which requires FAA to set minimum seat size\u00a0<\/span>standards.<\/span>\u00a0That\u2019s why Dan Elwell announced that the FAA will be conducting the tests in November. The airlines, which have been pulling down\u00a0<\/span>record profits<\/span><\/a>\u00a0in recent years as they\u2019ve steadily crammed more butts into more and smaller seats, will almost certainly want the FAA to give its blessing that their sardine cans are safe.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Unfortunately, the FAA seems intent on granting them their wish. The advisory committee it appointed to provide feedback on the evacuation standards is packed with industry insiders and hamstrung by its\u00a0<\/span>own charter<\/span><\/a>\u00a0from considering seat sizes and seat pitch (the room between seats) as part of its recommendations. The DOT\u2019s Office of Inspector General has an ongoing audit of the evacuation standards, but there\u2019s no indication that the FAA will wait on the results of that audit before it conducts its tests.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n We can\u2019t let the FAA rubber stamp the airlines\u2019 current inhumane and potentially unsafe seating configurations. That\u2019s why NCL, along with a coalition of consumer and flyers rights groups this week\u00a0<\/span>sent a letter to the FAA and the DOT<\/a><\/span>\u00a0urging them to update their evacuation standards before the November tests. We\u2019re calling on the agency to update its evacuation testing standards to account for things like the presence of passengers with disabilities, parents who are separated from their children (thanks in no small part to\u00a0<\/span>rising seat reservation fees<\/span><\/a>), full overhead bins, and passengers who insist on\u00a0<\/span>taking their bags with them<\/span><\/a>\u00a0when they evacuate (or, even worse,\u00a0<\/span>filming themselves evacuating<\/span><\/a>). These are all factors that are likely to slow down evacuations, but FAA\u2019s evacuation testing standards don\u2019t account for them.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Updating evacuation testing standards may sound like wonky, inside-the-Beltway bureaucratese, but the consequences of not doing so could be deadly.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last month, I had the pleasure of\u00a0testifying\u00a0before the House Aviation Subcommittee on the implementation of the Federal Aviation Administration\u2019s 2018 reauthorization bill. My testimony touched on many of the pressing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13587,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false},"categories":[285,14,420,25,280],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2222"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2222"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15647,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2222\/revisions\/15647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}