Originally Posted by
rhysflies
Yes, but the seats aren't bench-like - they literally are just bolted together somehow. My point stands that introducing an additional seat width increases the complexity of manufacturing. Why bother, when you can just stick to 17.5" for all economy seats?
Its really not that simple. The seat tracks in the floor may be in different places, the stay-out zone between the edge of the seat and the aircraft wall may be different. You may choose to have narrower armrests on one aircraft to give more passenger space but might not need to on the other because of the cabin width. The benefit of choosing a platform seat like BA has done is Recaro will have a range of widths they can easily offer and so its still a bulk order but can be tailored to the dimensions of a particular aircraft cabin. I expect the seats will be similar but the width may be slightly different to take account of the 787s narrower cabin than the A350