This story has literally been flying under the radar. That’s ironic, considering it’s about airplane seats and a FAA safety study that flopped so badly it could leave Hawaii travelers in an even tighter squeeze than before.
The FAA set out to prove that smaller seats still allow for fast evacuations. But a study released July 1 by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found the entire experiment flawed from the start. The data can’t be used. The results aren’t actionable. And the people who fly to Hawaii most—older travelers, families, and long-haul flyers—weren’t even included.
The agency responsible for protecting passenger safety had one job. And they missed it entirely.
Why Hawaii flights are most at risk.
If you’ve flown to Hawaii in a packed cabin, you already know it’s nothing like a quick mainland hop. In domestic economy, you’re stuck for five, six, even ten hours. Full rows. Trays inches from your knees. No room to shift, stretch, or breathe.
The FAA study failed to answer the most basic question: Can people actually evacuate from that? And on Hawaii flights, that question arguably matters more than almost anywhere else.
These routes are long, crowded, and full. Overhead bins jam fast. You’ve got beach bags, snorkel gear, Costco boxes, strollers, and ukuleles. People bring everything. Aisles narrow. Tempers short. And when something goes wrong, it’s not just your seat that’s in the way.
FAA study flaws leave Hawaii flyers vulnerable.
The study in question was conducted by the FAA’s Civil Aerospace Medical Institute, which ran seat pitch and width trials to measure evacuation performance. Their conclusion? Smaller seats didn’t delay evacuation times. What’s the problem here? The study left out entire groups of real travelers.
No one was under 18. No one was over 60. No one had any mobility issues. There was no attempt to test realistic congestion, panic, or how people of different sizes interact in tight quarters. It was merely a lab setup, stripped of all the chaos that comes with any real evacuation, especially on a plane heading to or from Hawaii.
According to the National Academies, the FAA “extrapolated far beyond the data,” and its key conclusion that tight seats would not delay evacuation for 99 percent of passengers was not supported by evidence. The report stated, “The committee finds that the key conclusion in CAMI’s report that current airplane seating configurations should not impede the evacuation of 99 percent of the general U.S. population is not supported by the design and results of the research project.”
That’s not just a miss. It’s the kind of bureaucratic blind spot that makes people flying to Hawaii pay the price.
We’ve heard this before from you.
This isn’t new. At Beat of Hawaii, we’ve covered the disappearance of comfort and related safety in coach for years. And you’ve told us what it’s like to spend hours wedged into economy seating bound for the islands.
One reader said, “We had a full flight from Oakland to Maui, and my wife, who’s five-foot-four, couldn’t move her legs for most of the flight. I can’t imagine getting out in a rush.”
Another wrote, “It’s not just about comfort. It’s about safety. I look around and wonder how half the plane would even reach the exit in time if something went wrong.”
These aren’t outliers. They’re the conditions many Hawaii travelers deal with every trip. And yet somehow, the FAA designed a study that assumes everyone on board is able-bodied, quick-moving, and has room to maneuver. That’s not the reality our readers are reporting, nor is it the reality on most planes to Hawaii.
Hawaii flight safety concerns still ignored.
What’s frustrating is how completely many who are Hawaii travelers were left out of the FAA’s equation. The agency didn’t simulate a full flight replete with bags, crowded aisles, or longer-haul fatigue. It didn’t model how a retired couple might respond in an evacuation after five or ten hours of sitting. It didn’t ask how a tired child or someone recovering from a knee replacement would handle a tight row and a blocked aisle.
But that’s precisely who flies to Hawaii. The demographics of Hawaii flights should have been considered in this analysis. Instead, key groups were left out entirely, while cabins get tighter, flights get longer, and safety remains theoretical.
What could come next.
The National Academies didn’t mince words. They recommended starting it all over. New trials. New methods. Realistic simulations. Diverse test groups that reflect who’s on board.
But let’s be honest. The FAA doesn’t move fast. The last study, conducted from 2019 to 2021, still didn’t get it right. Meanwhile, seat pitch keeps shrinking. Density strategies expand. And no one has yet proved that any of it is safe.
Try crawling over your seatmate with two bags, a boxed souvenir, and a shoulder cramp—and then picture doing it in an emergency. That’s the real-world test the FAA never ran.
Have you felt the squeeze on a Hawaii flight? Bruised knees, cramped legs, or worries about getting out in an emergency? Please share your story in the comments, because this issue isn’t going away, and neither are we.
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First flight to Hawaii. Even with a stop in Vancouver going down and Calgary coming back. Feet swollen 😫 could not get sketchers off. Had to have help to get out of seat. Doctor said I was lucky no blood clots due to lack of circulation in legs and feet.
How can they expect a quick evacuation when the main aisle is barely wide enough for a person to walk facing forward let alone having enough legroom?
Yep, not everyone is the same size or has the mobility of a milennial or Gen Z person. Plus people try to save their stuff? Even though it is a “no no” people have grabbed their possessions while evacuating.
My biggest fear of passengers who may slow down the process even more are those who bring pets in cages on board. Priority evacuation to me means all humans out of the plane first and fast. Leaving posessions behind includes “Fido” because he is not human.
Pets should not be allowed in plane cabins for this very safety reason.
I am 5’8″ tall with long legs and cannot sit in many economy seats anymore as I cannot move my legs at all when my knees are pressed into the seat back in front of me. If I do end up in one of those seats, I have to recline my seat and extend my legs under the seat in front of me to get a little wiggle room to try to keep my legs from falling asleep, so no personal item under that seat for me. And I am not quick to disembark after a few hours folded into a tiny space. I don’t know how other taller people survive those seats on longer trips. It is like having to sit in a child-size chair when visiting a kindergarten classroom.
And I can’t count the number of times I have been battered by the elbows, butts, and/or backpacks/bags of people passing by my aisle seat, as the aisles are also now close to child-size on many planes.
How about looking at the financial implications? I love to go to Vegas. The airlines are in business to make money (duh). They need to have competitive pricing compared to other airlines, thus cramming as many people as allowed on every flight.
Assuming everything else is equal, if you have a choice of booking a $400 round trip ticket on a plane with the current configuration or a $600 ticket on a plane with 2/3 the number of seats, which would you pick?
Just saying… if people were willing to pay more for the comfort, this would be a nonissue.
Corporate America isn’t going to sacrifice profits for anyone.
A gentleman on oxygen died on a flight from Vegas to Kona I was on. They sat him behind me with a blanket over most of him. Everyone around me freaked, of course. We no longer will have my in laws fly here. My 84 yr old father in law fell trying to deplane. It’s just not safe. I’ve been on a flight that almost crashed. With today’s configuration, there’s no way we could get off in time.
My, my. What goes around, comes around. When I worked for Douglas Aircraft in the mid-60s, a group of us were invited to participate in a FAA mandated aircraft exercise to validate that the aircraft could be evacuated in 3 mins. The seats and isles were wider, we were all mostly in our 20s to 40s, in good health, and were laughing as we did the exercise. I don’t even recall that we started the exercise with seatbelts on. It was a lark, we met the time requirement and got the rest of the day off. What did it prove? Nothing, but it satisfied the FAA.
BofH is right to question the validity of this testing. Anyone who has flown lately has seen older, often infirm persons, who take way more time to rise from their seats and proceed down the isle. We aren’t all young and in good health. It’s only a matter of time before the reality of the current ‘sardine cans’ comes to bite us.
Even if the FAA retests these ever more cramped seats for evacuation speed, they seem to be willfully ignoring the risks those cramped seats present on long haul flights, such as DVTs. I’ve had one due to cramped long haul seating, and believe a guest at our Maui hotel suffered a loose clot while snorkeling the day of their arrival. Being able to get out in an emergency is important, but these shrinking seats are putting passengers at risk in other ways.
What the airlines are doing is cramming more people into the aircraft to up profits. From a safety perspective, this is a disaster waiting to happen. People are getting bigger as generations grow, and heavier, while seating and isles are getting smaller. Has anyone from ‘the old days’ thought about how you can no longer just ‘walk down the isle’ of a narrow body aircraft anymore? You have to sort of side step to keep from bumping into pax. How does that compute as ‘safe’? It’s all about money, but when that 737 goes down half way to HI, and half or less of the people inside can’t get out in time, there will be recriminations a plenty, and lawsuits to go with them. It’s only a matter of time . . . . . . .