[arrakeenrevived]

Aircraft are often sold between airlines, or reconfigured even with the same airline. If United ever wants to reconfigure their 737s to be higher density (which is pretty common), they might need to start using that door as a real emergency exit.

[free2023]

Yes I see, that makes good sense. Given the course of events, it's still a fair question from a design standpoint: Can this be engineered with a reversible option to switch it from functional to non-functional, depending on the seat configuration?

It just seems like a lot of complexity and moving parts, for a feature that's not in use.

[arrakeenrevived]

> Can this be engineered with a reversible option to switch it from functional to non-functional, depending on the seat configuration?

That's exactly how it's engineered right now, though.

This same design has been used for decades and apparently without problem, so it's probably just a case of someone designed it this way originally, and nobody thought to fix what wasn't (at the time) broken.

[fredoralive]

Yes, there are two options for that space if you don't need a door there, one which fits most of the door mechanism (bolted shut) and hides it behind a solid wall, and an option that fits a plug with a normal sized window[1], which needs more effort to convert to a working door. Alaska choose the latter.

[1] This can still be swung out for inspection / maintenance, but has no normal latching mechanism, and should be bolted in place.