Listen Now: Cramped Airplanes May Be a Safety Hazard, FAA Investigating
Your comfort level on an airplane may soon be decided by a total stranger.
Most people who travel by plane are well aware of the small seats, lack of legroom and uncomfortable closeness to your seatmate. Now, for the first time, the federal aviation administration is testing to see if those cramped spaces are also a safety hazard.
Does it take longer to get out of the smaller seats and tightly packed rows in case of an evacuation? So, beginning next month FAA researchers will recruit seven hundred and twenty people in Oklahoma to be part of a test group. Sixty at a time they will be seated in a flight simulator, then flight attendants will tell them to get out.
To mimic the sense of panic in a real emergency that first ones off the simulator will be paid. Then the seats and rows will be changed for another test. Each group will do the test four times.
A dramatic difference in how long it takes to get people out, could have the FAA mandate wider spaces, here’s hoping they move slowly.
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CBS News Radio national business journalist Brian Banmiller has spent more than 40 years in the news industry, covering business, politics and the economy on television, radio and in print. Currently, his “Banmiller on Business” reports are delivered to an audience of millions nationwide.
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