Front Row seats pose a safety risk—2016 study found; FAA issues a Safety Bulletin urging VOLUNTARY installation NOW.
FlightGlobal and StarAlliance have ferreted out an important, underpublicized study that concluded that airlines should install passenger restraints for front-row seats because its tests found that lap seat-belts alone could result in severe injuries in an emergency landing. Reports indicate that the FAA issued on 08/01/2023 a Safety Bulletin (google global search and search of FAA website) did not discover a public copy of this alert.
The warning, entitled, “Safer Passenger Restraints for Front-Row Seats.” It cited 2016 research indicated that lap seat-belts alone could result in severe injuries in a crash. The study was presented by faculty members of the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW).The subject was safer passenger restraints for front-row seats. The conference was sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). The conference aimed to share the latest research and best practices on child passenger safety, seat belt use, airbag deployment, and crash injury prevention.
Turkish Crash passenger seats——————————-Asiana Crash passenger seats
One of the reports presented at the conference was titled “Effectiveness of Rear-Facing Child Restraints in Frontal Crashes”. The report was authored by Dr. John M. Gohsman, a professor of surgery and bioengineering at MCW, and his colleagues. The research cited analysis of landing accidents including the Turkish Airlines Boeing 737-800 crash at Amsterdam in 2009 and the Asiana 777-200ER crash at San Francisco in 2013. The study found that the standard lap belts caused severe spinal and other injuries due to excessive body flail. The FAA recommends that operators install seats with airbags, shoulder harnesses, or other devices that limit the forward motion of the upper torso in front-row seats. The FAA also provided guidance on how to evaluate the effectiveness of these devices and how to obtain approval for their installation. The FAA states that these safety enhancements will reduce the risk of serious injury or death for front-row seat occupants in the event of an emergency landing.
A 2016 report given at a DOT Modal Affiliate, NHTSA, pointed to a safety risk relevant to airline passengers. Yes, the focus of the meeting was not commercial flights, but later this research somehow became known (When? How?) to the FAA. THE MCW FINDINGS WERE COMMUNICATED BY THE FAA IN A SAFETY BULLETIN. Voluntary actions by the US airlines (shared with other CAAs?) will remedy this risk faster than you can spell n-o-t-i-c-e-o-f-p-r-o-p—o-s-e-d-r-u-l-e-m-a-k-i-n-g, even if the proposal was able to avoid delays at OST and OMB. Hopefully, the seat belt manufacturers have 3 point/shoulder seat belt inventory ready for installation.
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US FAA urges early adoption of front-row seat safety enhancements
By David Kaminski-Morrow4 August 2023
US regulators are urging operators to adopt safer passenger restraints for front-row seats, after research indicated that lap seat-belts alone could result in severe injuries in an emergency landing.
Current guidance permits operators to install seats set back from cabin walls and monuments, which allow their occupants to flail forward in the event of an accident. But the US FAA says recent research has detailed the potential for serious spinal and other injuries resulting from “excessive body flail” in seat configurations which – with only lap belts fitted – permit unrestrained forward motion of the upper torso.
The potential for such injuries was “not considered likely”, it says, until recent research tests used post-mortem human surrogates – the formal term for cadavers – to compare their response to those of crash-test dummies.
An investigation undertaken by the Medical College of Wisconsin, and presented at a 2016 conference in Atlantic City, states that the injury biomechanics of standard lap belts were previously “not well understood”.Its study into motion of post-mortem human surrogates, wearing lap belts under emergency landing loads, showed that the resulting injuries were “severe”. These included transection of the vertebral column, fractures to the femur, and multiple rib fractures. The femur fractures were probably caused by the lap belt’s slipping below the pelvis.
In a 1 August safety bulletin, the FAA cites analysis of landing accidents including the Turkish Airlines Boeing 737-800 crash at Amsterdam in 2009 and the Asiana 777-200ER crash at San Francisco in 2009.“Occupants with free flail suffered spinal injury, while occupants whose torso was supported by seatback contact did not,” it states. It says the guidance permitting seat configurations that allow for free flail – notably those in which seats are set back, with only lap belt restraints – will not meet updated methods of compliance for preventing serious passenger injury in emergency landings. THE FAA IS CHANGING THIS GUIDANCE TO REQUIRE SUPPORT TO THE TORSO THROUGH EXTRA SAFETY FEATURES. “Until this guidance is published, the FAA is promoting voluntary adoption of installing safety-enhancing features such as airbags and shoulder harnesses,” it says.
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