DOT Report: Economy Seats Are Basically Death Traps

An investigation confirms what we already knew—that economy class seating is a death trap for passengers.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to review a petition filed by activist group Flyers Rights in order to create new rules about seat sizes and cabin space on airplanes. Since then, The Daily Beast has reviewed more than 900 pages from Department of Transportation documents that appear to confirm what we already mostly knew: that coach seating is a recipe for disaster for passengers.

In all the documents The Daily Beast reviewed, they discovered that the FAA has been using evacuation tests that are decades old and don’t account for the newer, more compact arrangement inside many aircraft. Two tests are done on planes. The first checks to see if an airplane can successfully be evacuated in 90 seconds (the planes are filled with volunteers for this), and the other uses dummies to test seat design and other cabin parts in the event of a crash.

But the tests themselves are not an actual representation of what would happen during a crash. Firstly, everyone involved is fully aware of what’s happening, what to expect, and what they should do. That does not replicate the panic one would feel in a real-life situation. The planes are also tested inside a hangar, so the variations that might appear (like smoke in the cabin or bad turbulence) during a crash don’t exist. The tests, though, are carried out with use of only half the exit doors and in poor light.

In economy class, the tests are even less valid. Newer aircraft have smaller and closer together seats, which almost certainly means that, based on measurements alone, most coach passengers can’t assume the brace position and would likely suffer traumatic head and neck injuries in a crash.

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