Congressman Cohen Asks FAA Administrator to Reevaluate 90-Second Aircraft Evacuation Standard

WASHINGTON – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-9), the Ranking Member of the Aviation Subcommittee, and a longtime advocate of advancing aircraft safety, today wrote to Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Michael Whitaker asking him to have current aircraft evacuation standards reevaluated in light of the January 2 Japan Airlines Flight 516 collision with a Japan Coast Guard plane.

The letter reads in part:

“While I recognize that the investigation is ongoing, it is widely reported that it took 18 minutes for the airline crew to evacuate the flight’s 367 passengers. The airplane involved in the accident, an Airbus A350-900, was certified to evacuate up to 440 passengers within 90 seconds with only half of the exits usable. While I certainly applaud the crew for evacuating the plane before the tragedy worsened, this accident should serve as a warning to reevaluate our standards before another accident occurs.

“I have long been concerned about whether the FAA’s evacuation standards consider realistic circumstances such as passenger demographics, mobility, and behaviors. In 2016, I introduced the Safe Egress in Air Travel (SEAT) Act with Representative Adam Kinzinger, and in 2017, we reintroduced the bill with Senators Richard Blumenthal, Chuck Schumer, Ed Markey, Bob Menendez and Dianne Feinstein. During the FAA reauthorization process in 2017, I introduced the SEAT Act as an amendment, which was ultimately included in the final 2018 FAA reauthorization bill that became law.

“Section 577 of the 2018 FAA reauthorization bill requires the Administrator to establish minimum seat size and distance between rows of seats on commercial aircraft to protect the safety of the flying public, which I’ll note is still not completed…

“To gather data in furtherance of the agency’s implementation of Section 577, and in further compliance with Section 337, the FAA conducted simulated emergency evacuations at the Civil Aerospace Medical Institute (CAMI) in late 2019 and 2020, well after the one-year deadline. This testing did not include evaluation of passengers who are representative of the flying public, including people over the age of 60, individuals under the age of 18 including lap children, individuals with disabilities, including those who use wheelchairs, service animals, significantly overweight individuals, individuals whose primary language is not English, or any carry-on baggage. Then-FAA Administrator Steve Dickson even conceded the tests ‘provide useful, but not necessarily definitive information…’

“The CAMI study made clear that our current 90-second evacuation standard may be inadequate, and the recent Japan Airlines event seems to further validate its inadequacy. I have partnered with Senator Tammy Duckworth, Chair of the Subcommittee on Aviation Safety, Operations and Innovation, in introducing The Emergency Vacating of Aircraft Cabin (EVAC) Act to ensure that the FAA does more to prioritize passenger safety by appropriately considering carry-on baggage, people with disabilities, seniors and children in its emergency evacuation standards. In my role as Ranking Member of the Aviation Subcommittee, I have also worked with T&I Committee Ranking Member Rick Larsen and our counterparts to include a version of the EVAC Act in the House -passed FAA reauthorization to direct the FAA to task the Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee with proposing updates to aircraft evacuation requirements…

“It should not be lost on anyone, especially regulators, that the evacuation of 367 passengers in 18 minutes where no one was injured or killed may be a rare instance. We should not put ourselves, the airline industry, or the flying public in a position to have to beat those odds again when we already have a real-world incident that demands change.”

See the entire letter here.

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