Alaska Airlines Completes Boeing 737-800 Retrofit (+Photos)

DALLAS — Alaska Airlines (AS) has completed its first Boeing 737-800 interior retrofit with its 10-year-long partner, aircraft seating manufacturer Recaro.

You won't see the carpet-art cabin dividers and forward bulkhead wall. Replacing them are muted tones of blue, beige, and grey.

Alaska Airlines flies 163 of these older Boeing 737 Next Generation aircraft, including the -700, -800, and -900 variants.

Photo: Christopher Dela Rosa (used with permission)

This week, Alaska’s Cabin Product Developer Christopher Dela Rosa shared on Twitter his excitement about the new enhancements to AS's fleet of 737-800, starting with N559AS.

Essentially, AS is porting the MAX fleet’s interior to their legacy NG fleet. The airline wrote, “Excited to welcome our first retrofitted 737-800 back into the @AlaskaAir fleet!"

Seating Details

Recaro seating will adorn both business/first and economy classes. The award-winning Economy Class seat, BL3520, is considered to be both lightweight and comfortable, which many of today’s slimline seats are not.

The updated Recaro seat design includes both a folding tray with a cup holder cutout and a net to hold small personal items are included with the seats on N559AS Salmon.

Personal electronic device holders, which enable passengers to comfortably watch media or read on their mobile devices in flight, are a welcome improvement over the current seats in addition to the LED lighting.

There is even a coat hook to prevent your jacket from getting wrinkled during the flight, and the headrest is six-way adjustable. With new dividers and bulkheads, every seat has a power outlet and a device holder, and the seats are lighter, so the airframes don't have to support as much empty weight.

Overall, having a lighter aircraft means greater fuel efficiency, which reduces fuel consumption and flight operating costs. Emissions reduction is a top priority for any airline, and AS is as many set on improving its sustainability efforts.

Featured image: N559AS Alaska B737-800 KLAX LAX (Salmon livery) #SPECIALLIVERY. Photo: Jinyuan Liu/Airways