Rear seats vs. Center seats

[kevin]

Jim,

It will be interesting to see what other folks more knowledgeable than me have to say, but here is my experience:

I wanted the same thing for my '73 P337. Here is what I learned five years ago.

First, even five years ago, designing any seat installation that does not use factory designs and factory parts would be incredibly expensive. The reason is that the FAA is quite sensitive about seat design and seat attachment, it is a big part of safety and crashworthiness. As far as I know, the '73 to '75 airplanes were never fitted with the pre '73 style seats, so you would have to do all the studies that a mfg would have to do today to prove that they are safe in that airplane. My investigation showed that that would be prohibitively expensive - would cost more than the airplane potentially.

So that left me with only one option. The '76 and later airplanes have a back seat that is on rails that are mounted on the sidewall. These rails then allow the back seat to be moved from the "even with the front door" position of your current seat all the way back to the back firewall. And they do recline very nicely.

So from an FAA approval standpoint, the easiest path (and still not easy these days, depending on which FSDO fifedom you live in) would be to obtain one of these seats from a salvage yard, along with the rails used to install it, and field approve the installation in your airplane. The field approval is relatively easy, because you are installing Cessna factory parts in a Cessna factory approved manner. It is entirely a Cessna design, nothing new for the FAA to worry about.

I did this. I found a seat, not horribly expensive at the time, I think $2000, and the labor to do the installation was about $1500 at a $50 shop rate.

BUT. (There always is one.) Over the last five years, I have discovered how incredibly lucky I was to find that seat. Since then, even before I completed the installation, I was offered $5000, then $7000, then $10,000 for the seat. People just could not find them anywhere. So finding a seat today would be a matter of diligence and luck. Heck, watch the NTSB site for wrecks, then follow the salvage...something like that.

I hope someone else has a better answer for you. I would also suggest you check with RT Aerospace at the link listed below. They certainly have the expertise to do what you are talking about. The offer a folding bench seat option for the rear seats in a Skymaster, not sure what year range.

http://www.rtaerospace.com/

Kevin