Hypothetical situation number 1:
For whatever reason a flight has finished boarding but not pulled back from the gate. The flight is full. At this time it is discovered that the entire plane is occupied by persons who fall into one or more of the following categories:

• blind
• deaf
• mute
• under 15 years old
• immobile or unable to operate the exit door due to some handicap
• non-English speaker
• unwilling to perform the duties required by exit row occupants

Would the flight be able to take off? If so, why? If not, how might the situation be remedied so the flight could leave?

Hypothetical situation number 2:
Same situation as above except that it is only the COACH cabin that is filled with people who are not allowed (or refuse) to sit in exit rows. The biz and/or first class cabins do have individuals that can, by FAA rule, sit in an exit row.
Same questions as for hypothetical number 1, plus....
Would they switch biz/first class passengers with coach passengers?
Would a biz/first class passenger have the option to say "no I am staying in first"?

Hypothetical situation number 3:
Same situation as number 1 OR 2 but the plane is not full.
Would leaving the exit rows empty be an acceptable remedy to the FAA?

Hypothetical situation number 4:
Without regard to whether the plane is full or not; nor whether passengers are allowed by the FAA to sit in an exit row or not; but there is no passenger that is willing to agree to the exit row requirements. All have stated emphatically that they do not want to perform the exit row requirements. (in other words, the FAs can't turn a blind eye to someone they suspect does not want to perform the duties).
Can passengers be forced (drafted unwillingly) to agree to exit row requirements?

I realize that these are very very extreme hypotheticals. The odds of any on of the scenerios above happening are very low. Please don't reply with "surely they could find some passengers that would be willing rather than not take off" - I am proposing hypotheticals that do not include passengers changing their minds about sitting in an exit row.

The FAA had absolutely no operational guidelines for the events on 9/11 because it was never conceived by anyone prior to that what could happen. They made it up as they went along. Just wondering if there are any contingency plans by the FAA or airlines for equally-as-unlikely scenerios as I have posed above?

Here are my guesses. Of course whether people would turn a "blind eye" to such situations is another matter.

Hypothetical situation number 1:
If nobody is willing or able, then the flight wouldn't take off. Maybe they would require somebody to leave so that willing standby customers or a ground staff volunteer could board.

Hypothetical situation number 2:
Y unwilling, C able.
I reckon you'd kick off the Y and use a standby pax or get someone from C. If nobody was willing in C, then nobody would fly.

Hypothetical situation number 3:
Leave exit seats empty.
NO. I think you need somebody on hand. Whether they actually have to occupy the exit seat I'm not sure. A cabin crew friend of mine had to fly at short notice to meet a requirement like this. It was a totally empty Airbus A320. But they had to have sufficient crew for the exits. I know this is slightly different to not having able-bodied pax - but I'm guessing there is some kind of minimum, and maybe if you have enough crew on jump-seats you don't need pax there.

Hypothetical situation number 4:
Nobody willing... No the flight wouldn't take off. I doubt whether you could draft people.

Probably we're get an expert soon to tell us the proper answers!

First it needs to be understood that exit row seats DO NOT have to be occupied/assigned for a flight to depart. I asked my mother who is an FA for AA and she told me that before a passenger is assigned an exit row seat at check-in they are asked if they meet the requirements. In this case, it would be very very rare for someone who does not meet the requirements to be sitting in an exit row seat once on the plane.

A plane can take off with zero passengers, and the flight crew sits in their jumpseats. There is no law/rule/etc. regarding that exit seats have to be occupied.

I hope this helps.

One of your criteria would actually be okay according to a few CO FA's I have spoken to. And here is a response to the question I raised this week from one:

"Is it also true on a domestic flight that a solo passenger that does not speak English and no crew member speaks her language is able to sit in an exit row? Thanks!"

"Surprisingly yes. Actually, the information we got in training was kind of contradictory. On one hand, they are supposed to be able to understand directions in English, but on the other hand, we were told that we cannot make someone move from the exit row just because they don't speak English. I guess the idea is that as long as they are capable of understanding "OPEN THE EXIT!" in an emergency, it's OK. It's another thing that I personally would change, but that's what they told us. But these things are supposed to be the gate agent's responsibility anyway - FAs aren't supposed to be making that call (although obviously sometimes things slip by and we have to)."

Although it might be the gate agent's responsibility the FA's have their required speach/questions. So perhaps both are resposible as a "double checking" type policy.

The FA's always tell me that they "must have verbal confirmation of my willingness to perform the exit row duties". The safety video points out that one must "be able to see the exit, hear instructions, and direct others to the exit...." and then goes on to remind passengers that they must notify a flight attendant if they do not meet the requirements. So obviously it is not JUST the gate agent's responsibility.

As pointed out by another poster, the seats can be empty. I just got off the phone with a United FA (20-year veteran) friend of mine. He told me that the exit rows can be empty even if every single person in all the other seats is unable to or unwilling. Flights can be empty. There is no rule that the exit rows must have occupants.

My United friend confirm that they indeed would not be able to take off. If the flight is full the rows must either have willing/able passengers or be empty.

That is intersting. I was on a WN flight about a year ago and sitting in the exit row. The person next to me spoke Spanish (and it appeared no English) and I had to translate for the FA and tell him that he needed to switch seats because he did not speak English.

Does anyone know if airlines can set their own policies and does WN require an English speaker?

Regarding hypothetical #2: Couldn't someone in F or C switch seats with Y exit row pax for take off and landing only and then return to their assigned seats for the actual flight???

There is another thread somewhere on this forum about near-empty flights (as few as 1 or 2 passengers). Obviously, those flights were able to take off with at least some exit rows empty.

Absolutley NOT! Once again, there DOES NOT HAVE TO BE A PAX IN AN EXIT ROW!!! Please understand this everyone!!! Also, it is now againt the rules to move inbetween cabins once the A/C has the breaks released. Yes, even a F PAX is not supposed to use the bathroom in the back of the plane in Y. But please people, keep in mind that there can be 100 seats on a plane, 4 of which are exit seats, and if there are 96 PAX on the plane, and the exit rows are empty that is fine!

This is a suggestion and not a rule. I just completed a flight this month and the F cabin lavatory was not working so we all used the one in Y.

In that case, yes. But FA's can and do make a big deal about it. Remember, one MUST follow a flight crewmembers instructions by law. However, the main thing here is that whatever the OP was asking is never going to happen. Sure, one might get a Spanish/French/German/etc speaker in an exit row by mistake, or some 14 year old girl who is dressed up to look 25, but it is the gate agents responsibility to check these things and the FAs to make sure that the person assigned the seat is eligable and sitting in the correct seat. According to my AA FA mother, AA is going to be disallowing PAX to move from their assigned seats to an "open" seat on a flight. This has usually been overlooked by many FAs and airlines, but AA is going to get strict about it. I think that is great and makes perfect sense. A la why WN sucks (but I guess they are now testing assigned seating)...

Let no pax on that flight sit in the exit row, then the plane can take off.

First off, none of these PAX should have been assigned an exit row in the first place, so the likelihood that this would happen is nil. They would be reaccommadated on a later flight. If one of them DID end up in an exit row ON a FULL FLIGHT, the FA would have to call a gate agent/CS agent to handle the situation. But in the end, the PAX will be taken off the flight if they do not meet the requirements to sit in the exit row. At that time, the flight is "closed" so not other PAX (i.e. stand-by's) would be put on the plane since the stand-by list would have already been rolled over to the next flight and by this time the stand-bys would have left the gate area. Plus they are already probably late, and adding more PAX would just cost time. The flight would go out with a few open seats.


LOL...No. A F/C PAX would never ever be asked to switch with a Y PAX unless they were flying NRSA. No airline would ever ask a non-NRSA PAX to switch from F/C to Y. Common sense.

As I have said already 2 or 3 times in this thread, the exit rows DO NOT need to have PAX in them for the plane to fly. Period. It is no question of a "remedy"...it is just how it is done!

LOL...No. They cannot be forced to agree to comply! Think about that one for a second buddy! Do you want some guy who doesn't want to help in an emergency sitting in the EMERGENCY exit row? Common sense my friend.

According to my United FA friend, for US-based airlines, the exit row passengers MUST speak English. According to his training this is an FAA mandate and not an airline discretionary policy.

He also added that the FAA does not care if someone "changes their mind". If someone claims they are unwilling but then later, for whatever reason, says "ok, I will do it" then they can sit in the exit row. He said there is no FAA training that says a person must be willing from the start. But he added that he personally would say "sorry, I don't want you in the exit row". He felt quite confident that if the passenger complained that the FAA would back him up and say it is alright for an FA to say "too little too late, you aint sittin' there".

Now I am not saying that any of this is cast in stone. This is what my friend told me from his training. The FAA does not train flight attendants but rather airline employees train their own flight attendants. Some things could get fuzzy in the translation. Remember, airlines are famous for saying "sorry, we can't do that" when in reality they CAN do it but they just WON'T do it. There is a difference between "can't" and "won't". According to a DL flight attendant, recently, one must provide a "verbal acknowlegement" of their willingness to comply. She then added "that means spoken". No it doesn't. "Verbal" means with words; "oral" means spoken. She told me that this is the FAA speach that they must follow. So does the FAA mis-use the word "verbal" in thier policies? or was she trained by someone at DL who was fuzzy on the difference between the words "verbal" and "oral".

I don't think that the FAA would accept writing your acknowlegement on a cocktail napkin. I am pretty sure they want oral confirmation. This is backed up with the rules that one must be able to "see the exit, hear instructions, and direct others to the exit". I don't think they want someone "directing others" by jotting down notes on paper while smoke fills the cabin. I am very confident that they mean "if you can't speak you can't direct others therefore you can't sit in the exit row."

I believe that many FAs are told that certain rules are mandated by the FAA when in reality the airline is embroidering their own rules into the mandated ones - whether intentional or losing meaning in translation.

Another example where airlines sometimes over-state an FAA policy: cell phones used on the runway. I worked a contract job at the FAA in Oklanhoma City earlier this year. I asked FAA employees about this rule. There was a time when all airlines claimed over the PA that "FAA rule states that one must turn off cell phones when the cabin door is closed and they must remain off until the cabin door is once again opened." Then a couple of years ago one of the big airlines (I can't remember which) started letting passengers use their cell phones once the plane had landed but before the door was actually opened. Then ALL airlines started allowing this. These FAA people told me that there was NEVER an FAA mandate that cellphones had to remain off until the door was again opened. The airlines were taking one FAA rule and exhagerating it to the point where everyone in the industry THOUGHT that this was indeed the rule.

So the moral of the story is "don't believe everything you hear".