People complain quite a lot about the lack of space in an economy class cabin. Squashed together in six across seating on board an Airbus A320 or Boeing 737 is the travel standard for most of us. Did you know one airline actually tried seven seats across? Yes, really!
The British built Hawker Siddeley Trident is an aircraft that resembles the Boeing 727 in many ways. Long out of service, one must wonder why anyone thought putting seven seats across was a good idea.
About Internal Cabin Widths
When Boeing introduced the Boeing 707 into airline service in 1958, it featured an internal cabin width of 3.54 metres. This same cross section carried over to the next product on offer, the Boeing 727. Clearly onto a good thing, both the Boeing 737 and 757 inherited it too.
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- We’re all used to six abreast, like on this Aer Lingus A320, but seven?!
Airbus designed their A320 later on and chose to go for 3.70 metres. Those extra 16 centimetres (just over six inches, boys!) add to passenger comfort. The Trident, on the other hand, has an internal cabin width of 3.56 metres, just 2cm more than a 737 or about three quarters of an inch. You can see where this is going, can’t you?
Seven Seats Across A Trident
Channel Airways in the UK ordered the Trident 1E-140 and decided to pack in 139 passengers. This is an aircraft that typically seated 96 to 103 passengers, so to say the configuration was dense is an understatement.
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- You really don’t want to be seated on the left in the forward cabin!
The airline ordered five Tridents on 5 October 1967 but ended up taking delivery of just two. The first, G-AVYB, arrived on 31 May 1968 and the second G-AVYE followed.
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- Air Ceylon operated the Trident 1E also and here is the standard six abreast seating in the rear cabin
Seven seats across only featured in the forward cabin, due to exit limitations. Apparently the theory was to allocate these to families with small children on the charter flights that Channel Airways conducted. You would hope the adults were small too!
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- Not the best image, but here it is in all its “glory”. Note how the triple seats across the aisle are thinner than those in the rear cabin.
As you can imagine, passenger feedback was not great and eventually the airline itself folded. With it went the big experiment on the seating and thankfully it has never happened since.
Overall Thoughts
Let’s hope the airlines of today (Ryanair!) don’t get any ideas, as seven seats across looks truly hideous. Imagine being squashed into those seats for an hour, let alone two or three. To add insult to injury, seat pitch was apparently extremely tight too. Sardine class did actually exist!
For those that think the golden age of aviation has passed, think again. It really does look like the 21st century is fitting that bill, what with lie-flat seats in business class, premium economy and the rest.
Did you ever experience seven seats across on the Channel Airways Trident? What was it like? Those seeing it for the first time, what are your thoughts? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Featured image by Ralf Manteufel on Airliners.net via Wikimedia Commons.
Seat map and seven across interior via this Trident web page. Interior photo from Neil Lomax Collection.
Air Ceylon Trident 1E cabin via Pinterest.
Thanks to WHBM.
I actually flew on that thing. STN-VCE. I was a tad smaller than I am now. I even sat in one of the 4 seaters along with some of my school colleagues – we were on a school trip. Always remember it.
I was hoping someone would have actually experienced it, as it really wasn’t in service all that long. Not a lot of people would have “enjoyed” that. I guess it would have been fine enough for school kids though! Do you remember anything else about it? Thanks for the comment!
Cool history
Thanks a lot, glad you enjoyed it!
Interesting. Also the paint job…Continental’s pre-1967 scheme. I looked it up, and it’s because Channel AIrlines bought Continental’s large Viscount fleet and didn’t want to repaint them, so it saved money by adopting Continental’s “golden tail” livery for all Its subsequent planes.
I noticed it was virtually the same as the old Continental colours. Great information there, that they bought the Continental Viscounts. Apparently Channel Airways were very good at saving and making money, by cramming in as many as they could – the other aircraft in their fleet were apparently also very dense. Looks like the focus on money included other areas too. Great catch, thanks for that!!
The DH Hatfield salesmen claims to have been the brains behind the 7 abreast monster. He later became the Bus salesman for AC and thats when I heard this story from him.
I wouldn’t at all be surprised about that, really. I’d love to see those seats in the flesh to really see what they’re like. Hard facts and figures like seat width would be interesting to see.
Thanks for the interesting story!
You’re welcome! Thanks for the kind words.