Lower Headrests Mean Lower Safety

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association is taking the FAA to task over the agency's "clarification" of a safety regulation affecting front seat rows on commercial airliners. The regulation, in place since 1998, mandates headrests on those seats to provide head impact protection for passengers.

The FAA's "policy change" to 14 CFR 25.562(c) no longer requires head impact protection for those front row seat passengers taller than approximately 5-foot-9. NATCA says this will allow seating designs that bring the first rows closer to the bulkheads -- adding room for, yes, more seats -- and potentially resulting in a taller passenger's head striking the bulkhead wall in the event of an incident that forces passengers forward in a violent fashion.

"If you are taller than 5-foot-9, you may want to avoid sitting in the front row of the next generation of commercial aircraft," said Tomaso DiPaolo, who represents the FAA's aircraft certification employees for NATCA. "Instead of standing up to the industry it is entrusted to regulate, the FAA chose to endorse this unwarranted reduction in public safety and our employees want to know this change is occurring without their expertise or approval.”

"Many of the FAA’s own Aircraft Certification Engineers, which NATCA represents, opposed this change," DiPaolo adds. "In fact, on behalf of those engineers, NATCA submitted formal comments in opposition to this change. The referenced safety regulation states in part that, 'each occupant must be protected from serious head injury.' In the FAA's response to NATCA's comments, the agency conceded that the 'range of occupants' considered when interpreting the term 'each occupant' has consistently been between the five percent female on the small side and the 95 percent male on the large side, but that under the new policy the level of protection provided to those occupants larger than an average male will simply not be evaluated.”

In its response to NATCA's comments, the FAA quotes the airlines as saying "a few inches of floor space is very valuable," DiPaolo said.

"The FAA appears to have adopted a new 'don't ask, don't tell' policy for taller passengers to simply give the airlines those two to three inches," DiPaolo said. "For the last 20 years, there have been clear and consistent engineering principles being applied to protect a majority of aircraft passengers. Now those principles are being thrown out the window because the FAA has decided that assuring such protection 'is a business decision on the part of the Industry.'"

DiPaolo adds NATCA is concerned passengers in the front rows on new commercial aircraft won't realize their seats don't adhere to the same safety standards as before.

"At least in your car you get airbags, a shoulder harness and padding, why should you expect less impact protection in a modern commercial airplane? Who is the FAA protecting with this kind of decision-making? It's certainly not the traveling public," DiPaolo said.

FMI: Read More About NATCA's Position On The Rule Change, Read The FAA Memorandum (.pdf)