Originally Posted by
expert7700
Southwest heavily advertised "no reduction in knee room" (emphasis mine). This tricky wording helped take media and customer attention away from the reduced seat pitch.
The slimline seat cushions were needed as part of the schem... err, plan, with Evolve. Since the fixed seat frames are tapered, knee room (but arguably NOT passenger comfort) increases as the seat padding is reduced.
They can likely keep knee room the same once again and add 6 more setas: by removing the magazines, magzine pocket, and putting a safety decal on the seat in front.
They need to get over 1" per row to add yet another row of seats. Evolve went from 32" to 31" to get that row With 24 or so rows, you can not get that much by removing the already miserably small pockets that will barely hold the magazine and safety instructions. At best, it is 1/2" per row.
I was not in the meetings, but I suspect that the problem is that someone did a massively effective selling job on the advantages of the Evolve seating based on return on investment and passenger comfort was a secondary consideration.
Furthermore, they did not buy a system, they bought a patch. Evolve may have worked if they had brought in ergonomic experts and designed the seating from the floor up, including the frame. In that way they could have worked with various knee angles (old frame, lower seat, higher bend, more pain), angle from vertical, arm height, visual lines and other ergonomic considerations that would have greatly mitigated the 1" loss of pitch.
What they did was put ill fitting new covers on the old couch and they have all of the defects of the old couch covered up by shiny new covers.
Cheap won.