A shrinking seat

Take heart, cramped plane passengers — a federal judge feels your pain. Citing “basic physics,” the jurist declared that shrinking seat sizes and knee-jamming space between rows are a problem that Washington regulators can’t dodge any longer.

For passengers made to feel like pretzels, the ruling is a rare win against airlines bent on cramming more seats into plane cabins. As human posteriors have widened, seats have shrunk, producing a torturous result right up there with screaming babies and lousy food. At the same time, rows are narrowing, producing a double whammy of sardinecan space and stiffer joints.

Appeals court Judge Patricia Millett unfurled the adjectives in ridiculing the Federal Aviation Administration for its shoddy reaction. At issue was a suit by the passenger consumer group Flyers Rights that said the dinky seats and narrow spaces were a health and safety hazard.

The court passed on the health aspect, but Millett unloaded on what she called “the Case of the Incredible Shrinking Airline Seat.” By stuffing so many slots close together, emergency evacuations need to be considered carefully, and the “vacuous” and “vaporous” evidence the FAA cited to claim the crowding isn’t a problem didn’t cut it, she stated.

With the the aviation agency ordered to redo its homework, there’s a chance that fresh studies will show the safety risks of panicky passengers clambering over seats and stumbling over each other in a rush to the exits. That result could halt the airlines’ steady drive to squeeze in passengers to optimize revenues.

The ruling hardly covers all the ills that travelers endure as airlines cut costs, strive to fill every seat and shrug off complaints. But it’s a wake-up call to federal regulators that financial pressures must be monitored in the name of public safety.