Ian W, that's an interesting point about rear-facing seats.
In a past life, encouraged by many trooping flights in an even older life, I did quite a lot of work in the late '70s on the feasibility of converting a fleet of F27-600s to rear-facing seats, of which there was a suitable 9G non-reclining model available.
The operational impact was a loss of 2 seats to restore the APS+passengers+baggage weight to what it was with 44 forward facing seats. The space would have been used for a netted cargo/baggage/mail overflow area, in the front of the cabin. The capital cost spread over the seat life was very, very low in seat/mile terms.
The aircraft were used by oil companies for personnel and cargo around their oilfields. We also used them for some low volume/short scheduled services.
The oil companies' aviation experts simply said that losing the 2 seats (they rarely, if ever, had more than 33/44 passenger load in passenger configuration) would be a deal-breaking breach of contract, and who gives a **** about the safety aspects, and the company's FD said that losing 2 revenue seats would be a disaster. This was only partly true; the aircraft, as well as some thin services, operated a short sector shuttle service at 100% load factors with the highest seat/mile fares in the world; losing 2/44 seats would have reduced the net route contribution from about 400% to maybe 380%.
I do not believe that much has changed; seriously effective (ie expensive) safety measures will usually be kicked into touch by the finance people, and regulators have insufficient balls to change that. So we will go on nibbling ineffectually at the problem. In a related case; are we holding our breath for effective and prompt regulatory action to prevent another fire and/or its outcome like the UPS tragedy at Dubai?
But after all that, it comes as a shock to learn that rear-facing seats are not necessarily such a good thing! Can that be so?
Last edited by old,not bold; 1st Aug 2013 at 17:08.