Practical Travel Safety Issues - Are overweight pax safe in today's seats?

This is a NY Times article that was also run in my local paper. I thought it raised some interesting concerns about current pax size, the size of test crash dummies, and the airplane seats.

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/health/150527595.html

What caught my eye:
"...Twenty years ago, when the federal standards on the strength of airplane seats and seat belts were written, the Federal Aviation Administration specified that the tests be conducted on crash dummies weighing 170 pounds -- a weight that the FAA said represented the midpoint of air passengers' weight...

...Now the average American man weighs nearly 194 pounds, and the average woman, 165.

...In 2005, the FAA updated the average passenger weights used in calculating each flight's total weight and balance. Men's weight was raised by 25 pounds to 200, and women's by 34 pounds to 179. (That is the summer calculation; it is higher in the winter when travelers are wearing heavier clothes...

"With Boeing narrow bodies, for example, if they are going to have six seats across, they can only be 17.1 inches wide."

Simple answer: No.
And they also put everybody around them in danger.

Federal Aviation regulation (FAR) 25.562 states the certification of seats for transport category airliners certified under Part 25.

Among the many different certification criteria, one is that in a change of forward longitudinal velocity, the seat must withstand a minimum of a 16g deceleration within .09 of a second using a 170 pound test dummy.

Here is a link to the entire FAR 25.562

http://www.flightsimaviation.com/data/FARS/part_25-562.html

This applies to not only the seat itself, but the floor attachments as well. On an airliner when seated if you look down on the floor you will usually see long plastic strips the same color as the carpet running lengthwise. These plastic strips are cover plates for the seat floor fittings commonly known as seat rails. To allow flexibility to move the row of seats to change the seat pitch, the distance from one seat to another, these rails have circular holes every inch or so and the base of the seat assembly locks into these holes, so all that is needed to change the seat pitch is to undo the lock and move the seat assembly forward or aft.

Same holds true for the overhead passenger service units (PSU), where the lights are and the oxygen masks are stored, they too are mounted so they can be moved easily in the same increments as the seats are, they just use smaller or larger blank filler panels that are between the PSU’s to cover the open space between the PSU’s.

Typically these changes are usually made for new aircraft certified under Part 25, normally the FAA does not require older airplanes to be retrofitted unless it is a serious safety required item. If the FAA does require retrofitting stronger seat rails this can be both very expensive and time consuming, considering the structural issues involved. It’s not a matter of just installing stronger seat railings and/or seat assemblies, but where the seat railings mount under the cabin floor would have to be reinforced as well.

I am not en engineer, but I am a FAA licensed aircraft mechanic and I would think in the light of the FAA increasing passenger weights used for weigh and balance computations, the FAA needs to revisit the seat certification process as well.

Mr. Elliott

oh no !!!! I weigh as much as an average american...time to start dieting :eek:

I too have suffered the "above average" size, weight persons as seatmates and fellow travelers.

Currently the debates are about making them buy another seat to allow them to "encroach".

No one is really thinking of the safety issues raised on this thread. Will it take a major calamity and a full court press, press reports to awaken all to wake up to this ? I think the answer is yes !