Originally Posted by
SJCFlyerLG
I seriously doubt that this would ever get FAA approval. Not only would it be quite difficult to exit this type of seating in an emergency, but aircraft have to be certified to have the entire plane evacuated in a certain time. An airline cannot arbitrarily increase the number of seats without demonstrating that they can comply with the evacuation time.
The discussion I heard yesterday suggested that these seats would not cover an entire plane. If there are a few rows of them then the total passenger count would not increase over the rated evacuation capacity of a plane, particularly if the aircraft also keeps traditional F seats, for example.