A flight attendant questioned the propriety of seating obese passengers at exit rows they may be inc...

Narrative:

Two obese passengers; one morbidly so; sat in a window exit row. They both said 'yes' to their ability to fulfill evacuation duties in the exit row. However; the latter probably could not have fit through the exit. Both had difficulty walking and both had problems egressing from seats. How can this be handled? We asked the gate agent to put a note in the passengers' profiles. The second passenger brought her own extension belt. How do I know it is in compliance with fars? On the return trip the same day a man over 300lbs also brought his own extension belt. He informed me that he bought it from the an on-line web site.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A Flight Attendant questioned the propriety of seating obese passengers at exit rows they may be incapable of exiting. Also questioned the viability of passenger owned seat belt extensions purchased through the internet.

Narrative: Two obese passengers; one morbidly so; sat in a window exit row. They both said 'yes' to their ability to fulfill evacuation duties in the exit row. However; the latter probably could not have fit through the exit. Both had difficulty walking and both had problems egressing from seats. How can this be handled? We asked the gate agent to put a note in the passengers' profiles. The second passenger brought her own extension belt. How do I know it is in compliance with FARs? On the return trip the same day a man over 300lbs also brought his own extension belt. He informed me that he bought it from the an on-line web site.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	853737
Time
Date	200909
Place
Locale Reference	ZZZ.Airport
State Reference	US
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	B757-200
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Parked
Flight Plan	IFR
Component
Aircraft Component	Seatbelt
Person 1
Function	Flight Attendant (On Duty)
Qualification	Flight Attendant Current
Events
Anomaly	Deviation - Procedural FAR Flight Deck / Cabin / Aircraft Event Other / Unknown

A flight attendant questioned the propriety of seating obese passengers at exit rows they may be incapable of exiting. Also questioned the viability of passenger owned seat belt extensions purchased through the internet.