U.S. Urges More Room Near Jet Emergency Exits : Aviation: The proposed rule is aimed at limiting passenger deaths from smoke and fire after accidents.

WASHINGTON —  Spurred by the deaths of travelers trapped in burning planes on runways in Los Angeles and Detroit, the Transportation Department proposed Thursday that airlines be required to increase evacuation space around emergency exits.

The rule would apply to all commercial flights with 20 or more passenger seats and is intended to limit deaths from smoke and fire after aviation accidents. It would present the nation’s air carriers with a pair of choices for compliance.

One option would allow carriers to remove the seat next to each window exit. If they do that, they must maintain the existing space between seat rows, using the current standard of at least six inches.

The other option allows the carriers to violate the six-inch rule between seats, squeezing rows together to allow at least 20 inches in front of the window exit seat. Federal Aviation Administration officials predicted that most carriers would choose this option because it avoids the loss of a fare-generating seat.

Additionally, the industry would be required to instruct passengers sitting in rows with exits to operate the emergency doors, and it would have to impose weight restrictions on those passengers. Most domestic carriers have at least two wing exits; some have as many as six exits.

Critics said the rule is late and inadequate. They urged that the entire row of seats next to the window exit be removed and that airlines be forced to maintain six inches between other rows.

Industry groups and government officials have debated the rule for more than six years, and the FAA proposed it two years ago. But Administration officials issued the rule change only after concerns escalated after the 17 deaths in the Feb. 1 accident at Los Angeles International Airport and the eight deaths in a Dec. 3 ground collision at the Detroit airport.

In the Los Angeles accident, many of those who died in the collision of a USAir 737 with a commuter plane survived the initial contact but perished when struggling to escape from the burning plane.

“This action is aimed at making it easier for passengers who survive the impact forces of an accident to escape a burning aircraft,” Transportation Secretary Samuel K. Skinner said in a statement. “Speed in evacuating an aircraft is the key to survival.”

Airline executives responded coolly to the proposed rule, expressing doubt that it would limit deaths and complaining that the FAA appeared to be rushing under pressure to do something in the wake of the recent accidents.

“We’re not convinced this will speed evacuations,” said William E. Jackman, a spokesman with the Air Transport Assn., a Washington-based group that monitors aviation policies for air carriers.

He said the carriers were surprised by the announcement and refused to say whether they would seek to overturn the rule. “We’ll have to take a look at it,” he said.

Mike Bensen, a spokesman with the National Transportation Safety Board, said that the proposal is “a step in the right direction” but that “we would have liked to have seen it sooner.”

Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Greenbrae), chairman of the government activities and transportation subcommittee of the House Government Operations Committee, criticized the proposal as a “totally inadequate” response to congressional safety concerns. She said the sudden issuance of the proposed rule seemed aimed at minimizing criticism expected to be leveled at the FAA during a hearing on aviation safety next Thursday.

“We made it clear at the last hearing that somebody was foot-dragging in the extreme,” she said, referring to a Feb. 25 hearing on aviation safety that she presided over in Los Angeles. “We gave them until today to give us a status report on the rule, and they come back to us with this totally inadequate proposed rule.”

Fred Farrar, a spokesman at the FAA, called it a coincidence that the release of the proposed rule occurred on the same day that Boxer had set as a deadline for the Administration’s status report. Next week’s potentially antagonistic hearing had nothing to do with the release of the rule, he said.

“We have a very definite procedure,” Farrar said, noting that the government has to prepare the rule and have it approved by the Office of Management and Budget before it can be released. “It is time-consuming and very bureaucratic.”

Boxer disagreed, saying that she was amazed that the FAA response came only after congressional pressure.

“Those bureaucrats have to be embarrassed into action and have to be pressured into moving,” she said. “Their attitude is that it’s none of our business, none of the American people’s business, whether they release a proposed rule. That’s outrageous.”

She said that, even if the FAA’s proposal was accepted, it could take at least two years to become final, given that it has to go through a public comment period and is subject to attacks by the airline industry.

“We want an acceptable rule speeded up and implemented right away,” Boxer said. “People’s lives are at stake.”

Matthew H. Finucane, director of air safety and health for the Assn. of Flight Attendants, praised the proposal because it would “enable the passengers to open the exit bay, find a place to put it and evacuate the plane in an orderly, single line out of the window.

“This is an important improvement in crash survivability. It will reduce the kind of scuffling that was reported in the USAir accident in Los Angeles.”

According to reports of the Los Angeles accident, survivors told investigators that a woman seated next to a window exit panicked, creating a logjam as passengers attempted to flee the smoke and fire. Investigators have reported that other passengers fought among themselves over who could leave first. Seventeen passengers were found dead, apparently after releasing their seat belts but before they could escape the fiery plane.

In the Detroit crash, eight passengers died trying to exit a DC-9 after fire roared through the craft. The fire erupted after a 727 had sideswiped the plane.