Seatbacks in Position and Empty, Please
WHAT’S going on here?
The Federal Aviation Administration said Monday that airlines whose flight attendants had been telling passengers that no personal items of any kind could be placed in seatback pockets were “following our guidance, if they are enforcing this with travelers.”
The agency’s response came after numerous inquiries following a flight I made from Denver to Tucson operated by SkyWest Airlines, on which the flight attendant announced before takeoff that, as a safety measure, nothing could be placed in seatback storage pockets — no eyeglasses, no ticket stubs, no iPods or bottles of water or magazines.
“Under new F.A.A. regulations, you may not place anything in your seatback pockets,” she announced as passengers boarded the regional jet. The only things that could be in the seatback pocket, she said, were “company-printed material,” like the in-flight magazine, the safety card and presumably the air-sickness bag. All “personal items” had to be stowed in the overhead bin or under the seat.
The immediate assumption was that a flight attendant or the regional airline she worked for had decided that passengers could no longer use seatback pockets to tuck things away — and the F.A.A. did not initially dispute that.
“It’s news to me,” Les Dorr, an F.A.A. spokesman, said when asked Monday morning about such federal prohibition on using seatback pockets. But late Monday afternoon, Mr. Dorr sent an e-mail message saying that the agency had been issuing “guidance” to carriers to that effect, telling regional agents who work directly with airlines that “nothing should be in the seatback pocket” except in-flight magazines and the safety information card put there by the carriers themselves.
Several major carriers said that they knew nothing about this and had no immediate plans to enforce it.
“The seatbacks are absolutely there to be used for personal items,” said Robin Urbanski, a spokeswoman for United Airlines — which was the airline of record for the flight I took, though it was operated by SkyWest, and the ticket was purchased on US Airways.
Marissa Snow, a spokeswoman for SkyWest, confirmed that the airline was enforcing the prohibition after being instructed to do so by “our local F.A.A. office.”
The airline, a big contractor to supply regional airline feeder flights, is based in St. George, Utah.
“The F.A.A. is clearly what prompted us to do this,” Ms. Snow said of the regional agents who she said issued the guidance to SkyWest. She added, however, that SkyWest now planned to ask the agency to “take another look at this.”
Longstanding federal law says that a plane cannot leave the gate until a crew member verifies that each item of baggage is safely stowed in a suitable compartment, including the overhead bin, or under a passenger seat.
That regulation does not mention seatback pockets. However, a 51-page 2007 F.A.A. directive on cabin safety does address “proper stowage of carryon baggage” and says in part, “nothing can be stowed in the seat pockets except magazines and passenger information cards.”
Ms. Snow said that SkyWest and inspectors who worked with the airline locally used this language as the basis of the ban on putting passenger personal possessions into seatback pockets. The prohibition “came more into focus” in recent months, she said.
Similar incidents have been reported recently on online travel forums.
“It’s an F.A.A. law. Get used to hearing me say that,” a post on FlyerTalk quoted one flight attendant on an American Airline regional flight as saying recently about another airline’s seatback pocket prohibition.
Tim Smith, a spokesman for American Airlines, said that no one available early Monday evening knew anything about the F.A.A. guidance.
Some airline executives, who did not want to be named because they were speculating, said that two recent phenomena might be behind any airline’s decision to enforce such a ban, with F.A.A. approval. One is that new fees on checked bags have created more carryon volume, and some passengers may be overloading seatback pockets — though they said they had not considered this to be a problem.
The other is that airplanes are landing and being turned around for the next flight on tighter schedules. Forbidding passengers to use seatback pockets “saves time for the cleaning crew,” one said.
E-mail: jsharkey@nytimes.comInterestingly, I flew on Skywest from Salt Lake to Denver last Thursday and the flight attendants didn't say anything about using the pocket. So, very inconsistent at this point in time.
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