Pilot seats slide back unexpectedly, leading to dozens of crashes

Some problems have persisted for decades as manufacturers minimized dangers and struggled to find solutions.

As early as the 1960s, pilots and NTSB investigators were reporting that Cessna pilot seats slid backward on the rails designed to grip them. Airplanes crashed when pins that held seats in rail holes popped out, letting seats slide so far back that pilots could not reach the controls.

“Pilot’s seat slid to full rear position on bounced landing,” the NTSB wrote of a Cessna 172 hard landing on Aug. 18, 1966, in New Jersey. More reports followed: “Pilot’s seat slid back. Unable to reach controls” (April 11, 1969, Alaska). “Pilot’s seat unlatched and moved rearward during takeoff roll” (Aug. 30, 1969, Milwau-

Cessna waited 17 years after the NTSB noted a problem to alert plane owners.

kee). “Pilot seat not locked before takeoff, seat slid back” (Aug. 8, 1971, Pennsylvania).

After urging owners of its military models in 1975 to replace worn parts, Cessna waited until 1983 to notify civilian owners — 17 years after the NTSB first noted a problem. Cessna’s civilian notice was a low-priority “service information letter,” which said nothing about the danger of a seat sliding backwards. Its title: “Seat rail inspection guidelines.”

But when the FAA proposed in 1987 a mandate for Cessna owners to inspect seat rails and replace worn parts, the company grew worried. Mandatory seatrail inspection “would result in a significant number of seat rails that required replacement,” it said in an Aug. 7, 1987, letter to the FAA. The problem, Cessna added, is that “with present production capabilities, we would be unable to supply massive quantities of rails.” That could ground thousands of planes if their seat rails were found to be worn and replacements weren’t available.

The FAA tried to accommodate, according to a Sept. 4, 1987, agency memo, and encouraged Cessna to develop “an inexpensive interim modification for defective seat rails that would prevent aircraft groundings.”

Cessna developed and began selling the inexpensive modification, but it was difficult to install and involved “awkward operation,” Cessna noted in an internal memo. Cessna owners, who could choose whether or not to buy the modification, were so reluctant that the company estimated replacing every seat rail would take 600 years.

On Aug. 14, 1989, James Cassoutt, his wife, Cindy Cassoutt, and a friend, Judy Kealey, suffered extensive fractures, burns and organ injuries when Cassoutt crashed his Cessna A-185E, which did not have the new part. After a Florida judge found that Cessna’s responses to the seat problems “were neither timely nor adequate,” a Florida jury awarded the three $480 million, including $400 million in punitive damages. The 2001 case settled for $41 million, court records show.

Cessna insisted that the crashes were caused by pilots who didn’t maintain the seats or assure they were secured before takeoff. The company said in a statement to USA TODAY that its aircraft are safe “when they are used and maintained as required by published guidance.”

Cessna developed a safety device in 2007 to stop a pilot’s seat from sliding if the rail pins came loose, but since then there have been at least five Cessna crashes involving seat sliding.

In 2011, FAA required Cessna owners to conduct more thorough inspections than ordered. But a U.S. judge said inspections and warnings do not compensate for a defective design. “Even if the pilot takes all of the precautions urged by Cessna,” Judge David Herndon of Illinois wrote in 2005, “the pilot may be left with a false sense of security because he or she believes the seat is properly locked, when it is not.”