To do a proper test of a seat it needs to be tested in line service, with real people.

Taking two rows of seats, setting them up in some secret hangar space at Roissy (or Heathrow or Hamburg...) and sitting some people in them, some large and some small, is meaningless. Even if afterwards the airline can claim that the seats were tested with people who need lots of legroom.

What would be much more telling: install the seats on some planes, taking some families with small children and all the equipment that they need to stow, people like brunos and me with a "fragile" back and on some flights give them pillows and on others don't, people that do an early morning flight and want to work on their PC and still have space for a cup of coffee on the fold-down tray-table, people traveling in winter with a coat and jacket which they want to hang somewhere and not stuff them in dirty overhead bins. Put the chap who wants to work next to a sweaty un-showered walrus traveler who snores or makes strange noises when gulping his sacré-sulé. See whether people can fit newspapers, their iPad or laptop in the seat pockets without reducing space for their legs by 85%. Check whether boarding and de-boarding are faster or slower with immobile armrests. And of course don't forget the over-excited 10 year old who kicks the seat in front at every action surge on his Gameboy. (And if you really want to test it, throw in some automatic check surprises à la Air France).

And then try to convince us that NEO is as good as it gets.

Sure, a crying baby is a crying baby. But it's easier to tolerate in a cabin where seat design and layout are absorbing some of the commotion; and the baby is less likely to cry when his parents aren't all stressed out by that silly immobile armrest which prevents them from having the kid stretch out across both their laps, and that idiotically small tray table where they can't put all the baby food and bottles and medication etc. And while a sweaty un-showered walrus is a sweaty un-showered walrus having enough space to squeeze between his fat legs, the seat in front and the cabin wall does make a difference. And so on.

NEO was brought upon us at the height of AF's cheapo obsession period and things turned around since then. But installing on a commercial airliner seats that even in the waiting room of a public hospital would be difficult to live with is something that for many of us will be remembered for long as a particularly stron example of the "who cares about customers" school of management.