6 considerations when buying used airline passenger seats

Great! The airline aircraft passenger seat is an iconic item familiar worldwide and is a necessary component to accurately recreate the passenger cabin for training as well as other aviation themed projects.

Cabin Crew Safety carry good stocks of ex-service aircraft seats and have compiled the following useful list of six things that are good to know and consider before buying ex-airline seating.

1) Seat configuration; the passenger triple.

While wide body aircraft can feature different seat configurations, the standard for the narrow body is the passenger triple seat. One seat on the left (A,B and C) and one seat on the right (D,E and F). One seat that seats three passengers, meaning six passengers to a row in an economy cabin. Business seats in the narrow body aircraft may be wider double seats.

2) Left or right side of cabin?

Okay, so which is the left and which is the right hand side of the cabin? Facing forward to the flight deck the aircraft left is your left hand side. Seats A, B and C are on the left hand side. Whilst left and right of cabin passenger seats look the same they are configured slightly differently to allow for the aircraft aisle or cabin sidewall position. If your project requires you to create one side of the aircraft then you will need all left or all right seats. For a complete cabin (left and right hands) you will need equal left and right hand aircraft seats.

3) Leather versus cloth passenger seats?

Leather seats are common in many aircraft not because of cabin class but because they are hard wearing, easier to clean, keep clean and make good during their life. As such a used leather aircraft seat is generally a better investment than a cloth seat although the leather equivalent may be a little more expensive to purchase.

4) End of life seats versus aircraft removed?

Be clear on what you want the seat for and whether you are willing to undertake any restoration work on it. At the end of an aircraft cabin's life the seats have seen many hours of passenger use and operators do not generally scrap seating that is in prime condition. However, if you are willing to rework and, or re-cover these seats then it will cost you less.

If you want to 'purchase and go' then the next up is the aircraft removed ship set. In this case a cabin may have been upgraded to a new fit out and the old ship set of seats removed for sale. Seats from these ship sets can often be purchased in smaller quantities if the owner has been unable to resell a complete set for fitting onto another aircraft.

5) Safe installation of airline seats.

In the aircraft the passenger seats fix into rails in the aircraft floor which allow the aircraft operator to change the pitch of the seats in a particular cabin or fit larger footprint first class seating.

When removed and used for any application where the seat is not fitted into rails, the triple seat will need to be fixed to a suitable platform or the floor.

Also for flight operations any seat will have to have passed a burn test as well as other certification for use. As an aircraft removed item, aircraft seats are not normally sold with any such paperwork or certification.

6) Shipping.

Aircraft seats are large items and the costs of having them safely shipped to your location needs careful consideration in your overall budget. Whilst larger requirements make things more economical, shipping one passenger triple seat half way around the world as palletised freight would be more expensive than the item itself!

You may also be interested in these articles:

• Passenger triple aircraft seats for sale, (Jun 2014)
• Build a training replica aircraft cabin, (Jun 2014)
• The Flight Attendant Jump Seat, (Feb 2014)