Last week I covered something that was interesting to me – the new seats for SpiceJet. At Aircraft Interiors Expo 2018, the seat was finally revealed in the flesh for the Bombardier Q400.
Featured:
Spice Chief Marketing Officer – Debojo Maharshi
Patrick Baudis- VP- Head of Marketing, Bombardier
Benjiman Saada- CEO Expiseat
Why is this seat important? Well – it goes back to the plans for a 90 seater Bombardier Q400. To do this, there has to be innovation of the seat -and this seat does that in way that you’re probably expecting – in terms of weight.
The seat comes it at 4kg/seat. Add this with the proposed seat pitches – and 90 seats on a Bombardier Q400 becomes entirely possible.
I spent a little time at the Bombardier stand to test the seat. It comes in at 17″ across (arm-reset to arm-rest) – Note, that only one pair of seats were on display, and thus a legroom test could not be conducted.
I fitted in it without too many problems. A bit of bouincing around on it proved it to be solid enough, and having a reasonable comfort level
And for the distances these types of planes will fly – that’s the best one can expect. Bear in mind a Q400 in an unoptimised state has a range of 1,100 nautical miles (1200 miles), this is for missions of up to 3 hours tops (with recommended missions of 2 hours), comfort optimisation hasn’t been the core focus always – more like cramming them in has been the requirement.
A reasonably comfortable seat and legroom will be the trick to making a 90 seat work. The seat part is workable.
The leg room… that will be a different matter I suspect.
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