In a previous post, it was noted that the first of the Qantas reconfigured 737 aircraft had returned to the skies. While that post focussed on a new inflight entertainmentt option, there were other changes being made to the aircraft.
As we posted in August, Qantas had plans to install a new row of seats in the 737 aircraft, This extra row of economy seats was to be installed at the rear of the aircraft. The space for the extra row was to come from a reconfiguration of the galley space, and changing the current toilets to a more slimline offering.
The first of the reconfigured aircraft, registration VH-VXR, returned to the skies late last week, sporting a new configuration of 12 Business Seats and 162 Economy Seats, representing an increase of 6 seats in the economy section.
Qantas have publsihes seatmaps of the different configurations, the original configurationĀ is here and the new configuration here. The changes become a bt more obvious when we place the two images side by side, As seen in the following image, the changes are pretty much most obvious at the rear of the aircraft.
The image shows the way that the galley and toilets have been reconfigured to allow the extra row of seats to be installed.The new row 30 fits into the position where the toilets used to be.
By doing this way, the seating arrangement of the rest of the aircraft remains unchanged, and importantly, there is no reduction in the amount of legroom in each row.