The Influence of Adjacent Seating Configurations on Egress through a Type III Emergency Exit

When the United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority CAA established a mandatory action intended to improve access to, and opening of, Type III emergency exits, the Northwest Mountain Region identified a need for a study to evaluate the proposed changes against existing minimum requirements of the Federal Aviation Regulations FAR. The results indicate that the proposed CAA configuration and the alternative configuration were both more effective than the minimum configuration required by the FARs as measured by evacuation flow rate. There were no significant differences in the exit preparation time among the four seating arrangements. eg