2 senators call on FAA to study impact of reduced flight attendant staffing

A pair of Senate Democrats is demanding answers from FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford on airplane evacuation testing that's nearly two years overdue and his agency's decision to allow airlines to be able to reduce the number of flight attendants on some long-haul widebody flights. They say their concern is that there may be more emergency exit doors than flight attendants in the event of an evacuation.

"Without a certified Flight Attendant positioned at every dual-aisle floor-level exit, passengers could be left vulnerable at precisely the moment they must rely on skilled, decisive guidance and rapid action from highly trained and certified Flight Attendants," Sens. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin wrote in a letter exclusively obtained by CBS News. "Furthermore, reduced staffing poses additional risk in the unfortunate event that a Flight Attendant is left incapacitated during a serious incident."

The senators say American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines have all received approval from the FAA to reduce the number of flight attendants on some aircraft under rules that require one flight attendant for every 50 passengers.

"... [I]t violates the purpose of evacuation certification and creates a dangerous gap in safety," Duckworth and Baldwin wrote. "Reducing the minimum crew requirement means that a single Flight Attendant is solely responsible for operating two doors, up to 19 feet apart. This means one Flight Attendant could be responsible for evacuating hundreds of passengers across two aisles and middle column seats."

An FAA spokesman told CBS News the agency will respond directly to the lawmakers.

Last year, the FAA certified American's new 787-9P aircraft seating configuration with minimum staffing of seven flight attendants despite the plane having eight exit doors. The airline says it continues to assign eight to 10 flight attendants on those flights depending on distance, but that minimum staffing level allows the carrier to be able to operate a flight if a crew member issue, such as an illness, occurs while during a trip or while aboard.

"FAA safety regulations base flight attendant requirements on airplane seating capacity. On June 25, the FAA observed American Airlines successfully complete evacuation safety demonstrations with seven flight attendants on its Boeing 787-9P airplanes. American's 787-9P aircraft have a lower seating capacity than its other 787 models, which require eight flight attendants," the FAA said in a statement at the time. The agency says it establishes flight attendant requirements based on the maximum seating capacity to ensure sufficient crew members to handle an evacuation.

The airlines must successfully complete that FAA evacuation demonstration for every seating configuration of an airliner in their fleet to determine minimum staffing requirements. Those requirements may vary based on the seating configuration and duration of the flight. Airlines may also opt to schedule additional cabin crew members above that minimum number.

"Today, nothing stops airlines from assigning one Flight Attendant to cover two door exits on widebody aircraft. Previous accidents have shown that leaving exits unattended during an evacuation leads to chaos, results in unusable exits being opened, causes injury, and increases smoke and fumes into the cabin," said Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, a union representing 55,000 flight attendants at 20 airlines, including United. "Our union is calling on Congress and the FAA to require at least one Flight Attendant per door exit on widebody aircraft."

The Association of Professional Flight Attendants, the union representing American Airlines flight attendants, met with lawmakers, including Duckworth, about their staffing concerns in December, calling the minimum staffing numbers an "industry-wide problem of airlines reducing minimum crew, leaving widebody exit door(s) exposed without a trained Flight Attendant to evacuate."

Duckworth, the ranking Democrat on the Senate aviation subcommittee, has long pushed for the FAA to conduct evacuation testing that reflects real-world conditions including small children, elderly and disabled passengers, as well as luggage, service animals and other potential obstacles.

The senators are also seeking an update on evacuation testing that Congress mandated the FAA complete within one year of the FAA's reauthorization bill passing. That deadline passed in May 2025. The updated testing was to replace a series of tests the FAA conducted in 2019 that did not include any real-world scenarios such as luggage in the cabin and passengers who were children, seniors or disabled.

"Almost two years after enactment, the report is still not complete," the senators wrote.

The FAA requires an aircraft to be able to be evacuated within 90 seconds, but real-world evacuations often take far longer. In 2024, it took passengers and crew between 11 and 18 minutes to fully evacuate Japan Airlines Flight 516 after it collided with a coast guard plane at Tokyo's Haneda Airport, according to accounts from the airline and the Japan Transport Safety Board.

"This standard is not arbitrary—it is based on the harsh reality that seconds can be the difference between life and death," Duckworth and Baldwin write in their letter.

The FAA says it has completed the initial portion of its study on improving evacuation efficiency and is working with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to review the research on seat pitch, essentially the distance between rows of seats, and seat width before it completes the study.

"After seeing more and more aircraft evacuations that don't meet the 90-second standard that the FAA is supposed to hold itself to, we passed legislation requiring them to ensure that evacuation standards reflect the world of flying today. Two years later, they still haven't done so," Duckworth said in a statement to CBS News. "All the while, the FAA continues to allow airlines to reduce the size of their crew, further weakening their ability to meet federal evacuation standards. Absolutely nothing about this makes the flying public safer."

A 2020 Department of Transportation Inspector General report found the FAA's process of updating evacuation standards "lacks data collection and analysis on current risks."

In 2024, Duckworth, who lost both of her legs while serving in the Iraq War, told CBS News she was not confident she would be able to get off a plane in less than 90 seconds in an emergency.

"Not at all confident, not at all confident. I often fly where I'm not wearing both my artificial legs," Duckworth said at the time. "I don't think it's realistic anymore. … Conduct a real test and let's see what the realistic standard is."

"We need answers. Are the current [plane] evacuation standards, are they adequate?" former National Transportation Safety Board chair and CBS News transportation safety analyst Robert Sumwalt told CBS News last August. "It's definitely time for the FAA to go back and reassess what standards they're using for evacuations. It's been almost 35 years since those standards were published."

The senators are now calling on the FAA to study the impact of the reduced flight attendant staffing on evacuation efficiency.

"The presence of Flight Attendants, stationed in the right locations, help passengers survive when their lives depend on it. Appropriate crew staffing is not a luxury; it is a life-saving necessity," the senators wrote.