Despite thousands of complaints from the public about the discomfort of shrinking airline seats and footroom, many of them citing health concerns, it's unlikely that the Federal Aviation Administration will change much when it issues rules for seat size and pitch.
Those rules, and therefore the comment period, were required under the 2018 re-authorization of the FAA, but no action took place until numbers of Senators and Representatives gave the agency a shove last year. However, the agency has indicated that it sees a very narrow mandate: the language of the bill calls for minimums that "are necessary for the safety of passengers." And in their view, over the years, that doesn't mean comfort, it means evacuation time.
The airlines have pushed that view, too: A statement this week from the Airlines for America lobbying group says “The FAA should maintain its requested focus on safety and not comfort or convenience.”
The public seems to disagree: Most of the tens of thousands of submitted comments cited comfort or health; over 2,900 referred to knee issues, nearly 400 had issues with circulation and 1,200 or so wrote about pain after flying in cramped seats.
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