Site Admin

Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 949
Location: Carmel, IN

If someone could come up with a way to quickly convert economy to premium seats, and got a patent on it, he or she would be a gawzillionaire. I wonder if anyone is working on this?

Think about it. Say you have a standard domestic aircraft like the 737-300. UA, for example, flies this with 8 FC seats and 112 coach seats, some in their Economy Plus configuration. Say they fly that aircraft from IND to DEN. Maybe there's demand on the Monday morning and Friday evening flights for more premium seats, as business travellers are going back and forth. For those flights, they could sell 12 FC seats and upgrade 8 more top-tier frequent flyers who bought full-fare economy tickets. So they need to add 12 FC seats (3 rows of 4 seats each).

What if there were a way to flexibly switch the first three rows of economy within 10 minutes and make them FC seats? Here's my idea:

Take the Ecomony Plus section, where the extra legroom already exists. You've got 6 rows to work with before the exit row. Make those rows able to slide along a track by undoing fasteners and moving them back. Take those rows and slide them back to the standard Economy width. Spread the first four E+ rows out evenly so that they gain as much legroom as possible. Now for the seats.

Make these seats so that the middle seat is divided in half. When in 3-seat economy mode, there are all the armrests, and the seats each have a sleeve that pulls down and makes them look like one seat. To convert it to 2-seat FC mode, you would take the sleeve off all three seats, remove the middle armrests by popping a lever or using some kind of tool. Then you'd pop another lever that would allow the middle seat to slide slightly apart where it is divided in the middle, and add the armests back there. Then slide first-class seat covers over the outside seats and one half of the middle seat to make the three seats into two.

You then put the first class-economy divider curtain on a sliding track that allows you to move it back to where you've expanding FC to. (BA does this on the ERJ's to offer FC service on the regional jets to as many people as sign up for it.). Voila - flexible first class seating for when you need it.

It would all have to meet FAA testing standards for crashworthiness or whatever you call it. It would also have to be done within 10-15 minutes, and preferably be handles either by the FA's or by the ground crew/gate agents without requiring a mechanic to come on board.

So am I on my way to being a gawzillionaire?

Site Admin

Joined: 15 Jun 2005
Posts: 2316
Location: Indianapolis, IN

I just picture a minivan where you can close a seat up into the floor. But given the odd dimensions I doubt it can be done. You are talking about seating with different floor dimensions. I don't see how it could be done without physically removing a row. Rotating it under the floor and having different seating rotating up wouldn't work because of the change in pitch.