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TRB Special Report 358: Peer Review of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Study of the Effects of Passenger Seat Width and Pitch on Airplane Evacuation Performance presents a peer review of a research project conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA’s) Civil Aerospace Medical Institute (CAMI) to assess whether airplane evacuation times can be affected by variations in passenger seating space, and particularly the dimensions of seat width and seat pitch. CAMI requested the review because of FAA’s interest in knowing whether the project’s results may be informative to pending decisions about whether to regulate the width and pitch of passenger seats. Of concern is that constrained seat space may interfere with cabin evacuations during an emergency, especially because the average body size (e.g., girth, weight) of Americans has been increasing. In this regard, the findings from the review suggest that CAMI’s research project does not provide the information needed for the proposed purpose. The project’s fundamental shortcoming is that it does not directly assess how seat width and pitch interact with passenger body size variables to affect evacuation performance, and especially for plausible scenarios in which the number and concentration of people with large body sizes on a flight may differ from the pattern for the flying public generally.
