The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which says smaller passenger seats and larger passengers pose no problems in emergency airplane evacuations, has been directed under a new law to review evacuation certification standards for airliners, including “relevant changes to passenger demographics.”
The provision, included in legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump in October to reauthorize the FAA for five years, calls for the FAA administrator to review relevant data and consult with members of the aviation community — the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), transport-category aircraft manufacturers and operators, and groups representing passengers and crewmembers, among others — and report his conclusions to Congress by October 2019.1
The legislation said that the report should include recommendations, “if any, including recommendations for revisions to the assumptions and methods used for assessing evacuat…
