Originally Posted by
Prospero
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
And I have travelled, within the last few years, on a BA A319 with only 2 cabin crew, due to a crew member falling ill downroute. At the gate, volunteers were sought to reduce the pax numbers to 100 so that we were within the ‘50 pax per cabin crew’ rule as stated at the time. I remember this well as the first officer had to come into the cabin to read the safety briefing whilst the two cabin crew did the manual demonstration.