Re: Excuses, excuses
Yes, but hand tools require hands to operate - it still takes a significant amount of time to remove several hundred seats from an aircraft, even more if the seats have IFE screens and hardware embedded into them.
The seats then have to be offloaded and moved into storage, which also needs people to do, thus costing money.
Then after doing all this, you have space on an aircraft that is not accessible to containers, so any cargo going into this space has to be manually unpacked from the containers, placed into the cabin via the passenger doors, then secured by hand, all in a way that won't cause any weight distribution issues. At the other end you then need to unload it all in the same way.
The issue this all creates is that from a financial perspective, it's not as simple as "convert the planes to carry cargo", as the cost of moving cargo in the cabin of a converted aircraft is very different to that of cargo moved in the hold on a per-container basis.
Once this is all over, you then also have the cost and effort associated with refitting the aircraft, and if you have IFE ensuring that it all works properly again and that the hardware was not damaged during removal, transport, storage, transport and reinstallation.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
