Congress ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to establish minimum dimensions for airplane seats within a year when the agency’s funding was renewed in October 2018.

The FAA has yet to comply.

But today the agency will take a step toward creating a new seat size regulation. The FAA is announcing an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking – a signal flare to interested members of the public that the agency is considering implementing that minimum size for airplane seats after all.

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The changes passenger advocates want to see

Critics say that the FAA is not doing enough to analyze real-world scenarios and that more live evacuation testing is needed.

“The CDC says Americans have gotten bigger. The airlines have made the pitch tighter, and the width. We’ve seen checked baggage fees since the 2000s, so we’ve seen more carry-on baggage than we ever have,” said William J. McGee, senior fellow for aviation at the American Economic Liberties Project. He added that more passengers are distracted by electronic devices, and more are bringing carry-on bags and pets or service animals than ever before.

“The FAA has not responded to the fact that the interior of a cabin on a U.S. airline is different than it was 20 years ago in multiple ways,” McGee said. “You have a really, really bad combination of factors here, people who don’t fly a lot, airlines that are cramming them in, and an FAA that has been too laissez-faire on this whole thing.”

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