Moderator: British Airways Executive Club, Iberia Airlines, Airport Lounges and Environmentally Friendly Travel
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: London, UK
Posts: 22,213
The BBC offers an explanation. My bolding
“By taking out the back row of seating on its A319 fleet, EasyJet said it will be able to fly with three cabin crew instead of four.
That would limit numbers on board to a maximum 150 passengers.
EasyJet said it was an effective way of operating the fleet while "building additional resilience and flexibility" into the airline's operations.
Flights would still meet Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) regulations on the required number of cabin crew, which is based on the number of physical seats, rather than passengers on board.”
I recall back in the day, BA was able to reduce the crew count to 3 on LGW domestics by permanently converting the first four rows on the 737-400 to AC-DEF which brought the physical seat count down to 149