The Italian government stopped a British Airways flight from Milan to London Heathrow from leaving on Monday, because it offered passengers seat cushions with too much padding.
After the country’s aviation authority performed a surprise inspection on the BA flight at Milan’s Linate airport, they discovered that seats near the overwing exists of the Airbus A320neo had the wrong seat cushions. They were too thick.
- The exit row of an aircraft usually has more legroom, in order to create a wider space for quick evacuation of the aircraft.
- Seat cushions may be less pronounced in that row as well. The aircraft was supposed to have those modified cushions, but did not.
In order to be allowed to leave, the BA flight had to find smaller seat cushions for use in that row. Linate is not a maintenance base for BA (though an airline may keep extra seat cushions on hand at outstations, BA didn’t have this one handy).
The plane was sold out. They couldn’t just remove the seat cushions entirely without bumping passengers. So here’s what they did.
- It turns out that some seats on the aircraft, that could have had the extra cushioning didn’t. Those passengers were getting hosed!
- They had everyone look at the cushions at their seats. They had to check the serial number. And that way they found the smaller cushions that could be swapped for the ones at the exits.
All in all, they managed to solve this with only an hour’s delay.
@slimventures PART 1 – Random aviation authority checks in Milan almost grounded this British airways to LHR. #aviation #airbus #britishairways #milan ♬ original sound – Slim
@slimventures PART 2 – Random aviation authority checks in Milan almost grounded this British airways to LHR. #aviation #airbus #britishairways #milan ♬ original sound – Slim
It’s hardly the first time that a government objected to making air travel more comfortable! Although in the U.S. recently it wasn’t for safety. The U.S. government sued to prevent Spirit Airlines planes from getting more comfortable. And they won. JetBlue planned to acquire Spirit, rip out the interiors, and add seats with more legroom, seat back TV, and free internet. The Department of Justice objected that fewer seats means higher prices, and loss of the Spirit Airlines business model. They chose to preserve this vital supply chain of material for late night comics, too!
And by the way, the U.S. government by default forbids placing doors on business class seats so airlines have to request a waiver of this rule to install them.
Exit row seats are often shallower, from knee to butt. Where these too thick, or too deep?
the real question is how anyone in the Italian government had reason to even inspect the seat cushions of an aircraft that arrived and had planned to quickly leave.
Enforcing the law is not something that Italy should be shamed for doing. Figuring out why they did it the real question.
This is not really the governments fault.
The airlines have to allow sufficient space in exit rows to evacuate all passengers in 90sec.
If the airlines don’t want to space the seats more widely and use thinner padding as a short cut to get to the minimum space, that’s 100% the airline’s responsibility…
And this is why everybody hates Italy.
why should Italy be hated? BA sent a plane that didn’t follow safety rules – which the EU, not Italy, makes.
BA had an assortment of seat cushions and asked passengers to figure out how to unscramble the mess that BA or its contractors somewhere created.
The question is how Italy had any reason to look at that particular plane in the first place.
I have a feeling that a competitor had the scoop and tipped off Italian authorities.
Alitalia went bankrupt. ITA is no better so visitors to Italy choose other airlines. A sold-out British Airways plane sits next to a less than half full ITA and this is how an airport bureaucrat responds.
OMG! Too comfy seats? This is a “problem” that could have been fixed when the flight returned home. Flexing of muscles for Italy I think.
What about F/A moving extremely obese couple to exit row so they will have more room?
I purposely pay more for exit row, I’m a UAL F/a, so I can exit plane if necessary. This was on Allegiant..
There is no way this couple could fit through window exit..
These exits should be protected by all means, be it pillows, cushions, baggage or body fat.
This sounds like a legitimate safety of flight issue – related to legroom during an emergency evacuation. Shaming the government for providing an inspection here and reacting to noted deficiencies – seems ill advised.
@Nina Armstrong: You wrote, “There is no way this couple could fit through window exit.” Fortunately, to help passengers of size unable to fit through a window exit quickly leave an aircraft during an emergency evacuation, Boeing provides a unique solution on their specially equipped 737 MAX 9 jets. These jets feature a side exit panel that may come off in flight if the bolts are missing on the exit panel.
I flew the A-320 for years. The issue is the seat cushion cannot be higher than the bottom of the emergency exit opening. Our aircraft were not delivered with the skinny cushions but were retrofitted later.
I once had a flight delayed for 2 hours because the wrong sticker was on the slide cover. It said slide raft instead of slide. (there are two different slides on our aircraft depending on overwater or not)
Maintenance looked high and low for the correct sticker and finally had to rob a whole cover from a plane in the maintenance hangar.