Originally Posted by
rog747
I flew on the Channel 139 seat Trident from Stansted to Majorca and back (Was Stansted ZSD in those days?) with my parents and my pal in a ''4 seater'' at the front,
and I can say it was seemingly more comfortable than the Air Spain DC-8, or a new BA A321Neo today LOL
A picture I've seen a few times now, including on here, is this interior shot of a Channel Trident, with the 4+3 seating in the forward cabin, and the 3+3 in the rear one :
Channel-Airways-Trident-1E-140-Seven-Abreast-Cabin-Seating-Neil-Lomax-Collection.jpg (353×267) (travelupdate.com)
I'm trying to make out, the resolution is not quite good enough though, whether the individual seats were the same, just that in the conventional 3+3 cabin they were spaced apart by armrests, and in the 4+3 they were hard up against the next one. If nothing it would have been a manufacturing and spares nuisance to have the cushions etc different. I believe that the idea was families with children were seated forward, and one would not seat four adults together.
This picture appeared here on PPRuNe a while ago, and a long-ago Channel FO responded that he suddenly realised the nearest FA in the picture was his onetime girlfriend
It also reminds me of the last transatlantic flight I took, days before the Lockdown, in a BA 787 returning overnight from Washington DC to London, where walking back through the Premium Economy cabin and looking through to the Economy section, the seating width differential looked very apparent, and in a flash reminded me of this old Channel photograph.
This sort of differential seat arrangement for children was done in a couple of odd places elsewhere, Martinair of Netherlands with their DC-10s initially had them 9-across, 3+4+2, and then inserted a smaller additional seat in the middle, making 3+5+2, intended to be allocated to children. Of course, pax loads do not present themselves perfectly balanced like this, handling agents overseas could not get to grips with it and put adults in the centre half-seat (where they did not physically fit), and subcharters and short-term leases to scheduled airlines, which Martinair did quite a bit of, found it bizarre, and in the end refused to have them, which was the end.