Remember the rear facing exit row seats at Southwest Airlines?

The Flight Detective
a plane flying in the sky

An aircraft with a row of rear facing passenger seats was a thing once upon a time. You could find these right up into the 2000s, though they were relatively unusual.

Southwest Airlines had a row of these in the centre of the cabin on their Boeing 737s at one point. It’s a piece of aviation history I certainly had no idea about.

Here are the Rear Facing Exit Row Seats

Exit rows must be kept clear on flights, as anyone who has ever sat there will know. Your luggage has to go in the overhead compartment to prevent it impeding people’s exit in an emergency.

With the old Southwest Boeing 737s, this was certainly the case. A nice straight line from the aisle to the exit door means an easy out should something go wrong.

I’m not sure how comfortable it would be if all six seats were filled. No problem if you were a group of six, but if nobody knew each other, it could be a little awkward on a long flight, though I guess it’s never really ruined anyone’s life.

Another Set of Rear Facing Seats

Back in the day, you could find these seats on various aircraft operating around the world. Below is an atmospheric shot from 1968 inside a BEA Vickers Vanguard.

Even other jet aircraft had them, such as the de Haviland Comet 4. You can see the 1970s styling on a Dan Air Comet 4 below, which I took at the National Museum of Flight in East Fortune in Scotland. It is well known that facing backwards is actually safer in the event of an accident. This is why cabin crew jump seats are usually facing the rear.

Overall Thoughts

It’s great that Southwest Airlines tweeted about that cabin configuration. I had no idea they had rear facing seats at the exit row back in the day, and I always like finding out something new.

Apart from the British Airways rear facing Club World business class seats, I can’t think of any contemporary examples of this arrangement. I’m curious as to why it fell out of favour, when it was once quite common. You’ll just have to take a train if you want to experience it these days, I guess!

Have you flown in the rear facing exit row seats on Southwest? How about any other airline? What was it like? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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Featured image by Aero Icarus via Wikimedia Commons.
Southwest exit row seats by Justin Cederholm on Airliners.net.
BEA Vickers Vanguard cabin by Dan Clark on Airliners.net.

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Brian

It was common on SWA in the early to mid 90’s. Smaller 737’s back then. Used to sit in those seats from ONT to LAS. Funny, they were charged as “premium” seats!

ChuckMO

Southwest also had some aircraft with that configuration at the front of the plane. A buddy of mine and I flew from St. Louis to Chicago once and snagged the window seats on the left side, rows 1 & 2. We were among the first 20 or so to board, and I was surprised to see they hadn’t been taken yet (open boarding on Southwest). A Flight Attendant told us that most people thought they were reserved do to the odd configuration, plus some people feel weird about facing backwards. Not me, I plopped down in seat 1A and flew… Read more »

Alan

I thought American Airlines has rear facing seats too on their 787-8 Business Class don’t they?

FlyGuy

We loved those seats! As groups of us traveling to Las Vegas back in the 1990’s, we’d try to get them every time we’d fly! We called them the party seats! And they were!

Don

PSA had rear facing seats at the window (tight like SW) but very roomy on the 727-214 rear door exits

FSh

I have flown SWA since 1983. I liked the rear facing seats. I often heard the fight crew refer to them as the parlor seats. If someone was sitting across from you, it wasn’t any problem to adjust your leg position to either side, even if all six seats were occupied. And even then, you had great legroom as you could stretch across the aisle putting your feet under the seats across from you. Sitting across from people, though, was kind of like walking on an elevator and not turning around to face the doors. It seemed awkward at first,… Read more »

Last edited 3 years ago by FSh
Jerry

I know they were referred to as the “lounge” but I used to call those the “party seats”. I remember sitting in that row with people that didn’t know each other and there was always friendly banter. Mostly sat there on short hops between Northern and Southern CA where it was only 45 min to an hour. Sometimes a couple people had drink coupons and would buy a round (back in the days when there was no expiration date) for the whole row.

ptahcha

UA still has the forward/backward business class seats in domestic configuration 777, similar to their pre-merger business class seats.

Having flown “backwards” (or facing the rear) on both WN and UA, it’s really not all that different, other than during take off. The “lounge” seats on WN are typically used by a group, or last seats to be filled.

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