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With 3 million flights a year in the US, there's no way the cost is possibly justified by any reasonable cost-benefit analysis.

> Nobody died in a crash of a United States-certificated scheduled airline operating anywhere in the world in 2016...it is the seventh straight year that nobody died in a crash on a United States-certificated scheduled airline operating anywhere in the world.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielreed/2016/12/28/in-the-la...

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How often do planes actually crash? Is it often enough to get statisically significant data about survival rates in the event of an evacuation?

Also, evacuation after a crash is not the only safety issue - there is deep vein thrombosis, for example.

There isn't nearly enough real-crash data for something as specific as seat widths, but the FAA gets lots of info about this stuff by simulating evacuation procedures with real people.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...

All the more reason to do research into making sure there isn't a safety issue here. Stats like this just make people and companies complacent until the next tragedy strikes.

Research isn't free. It's very possible an order of magnitude estimate would show that the risks of seat narrowing couldn't possibly outweigh the benefits.

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