US senator seeks to legislates airplane seat size

Steve Cohen, Democratic Senator for Tennessee has proposed establishing mandatory federal minimum size standards for airline passenger seats. Cohen claims airplane seat width “has shrunk from 18 inches in the 1970s to about 16.5 inches today” but his real issue is safety rather than comfort. He says that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is putting passengers at risk because there hasn’t been adequate emergency evacuation testing of airline seating with rows set with pitch under 29 inches. “Someday they will lose lives because of the size of the seats and somebody’s going to be sorry,” Cohen said. Cohen, a member