Discovery Wings is quite possibly the best channel on cable right now. A nice break from all the crap reality shows. One of my favourite shows is Airport, a 30 minute look inside of operations at Heathrow airport. They have a few staff they regularly follow around and video tape their daily struggles which, any of you working in the airline business know, are not unlike what you deal with on a daily basis.
On a recent episode, and Iceland Air flight (a 757) needed to reconfigure their F section on the fly to accomodate more F seats. It was the coolest process -
What it appeared was that the first several rows of the 757 were setup for F or Y. They could be converted on the fly(no pun intended) as follows:
1.) slide curtain divider (instead of the fixed bulkhead we're used to seeing) back 2 coach rows (3-3 seating).
2.) Remove the inside arm rests from these two rows
3.) Attach this handcrank contraption to bottom of seat(on aisle), and turn it. It appeared the outer seats expanded and closed in on a wide armrest that gets attached between the two in lieu of the middle seat.
The before/after seating looked about the same comfort, width, etc. that we're used to on 757's flying in the US. They didn't physically move the seats, so the CG shouldn't have moved. It's appears that they have x rows setup for the 'on-the-fly' conversion with 37"(or whatever their F pitch is). When they're setup for coach, those few rows would just be like Economy +.
Has USAirways ever looked at this config? They could turn a 757(or any aircraft) into all coach or add a few rows of F in a very short time and enable them to match aircraft to demand quickly. It's something the F/A's did, too. Didn't require a mechanic since nothing was physically installed or removed.
On a recent episode, and Iceland Air flight (a 757) needed to reconfigure their F section on the fly to accomodate more F seats. It was the coolest process -
What it appeared was that the first several rows of the 757 were setup for F or Y. They could be converted on the fly(no pun intended) as follows:
1.) slide curtain divider (instead of the fixed bulkhead we're used to seeing) back 2 coach rows (3-3 seating).
2.) Remove the inside arm rests from these two rows
3.) Attach this handcrank contraption to bottom of seat(on aisle), and turn it. It appeared the outer seats expanded and closed in on a wide armrest that gets attached between the two in lieu of the middle seat.
The before/after seating looked about the same comfort, width, etc. that we're used to on 757's flying in the US. They didn't physically move the seats, so the CG shouldn't have moved. It's appears that they have x rows setup for the 'on-the-fly' conversion with 37"(or whatever their F pitch is). When they're setup for coach, those few rows would just be like Economy +.
Has USAirways ever looked at this config? They could turn a 757(or any aircraft) into all coach or add a few rows of F in a very short time and enable them to match aircraft to demand quickly. It's something the F/A's did, too. Didn't require a mechanic since nothing was physically installed or removed.
