Interior 5th seat option

[Chic Ritzheimer]

I missed out on a 250 for sale...the owner sold it to a friend after they accepted my offer(Keith Flowers 61' 250)...any way, they had an interior with a 5th seat option that looked real nice. There were 4 seats in the A/C w/ the 5th behind the rear seats. Does anyone know of a company that does this? Thanks, Chic

[Chris Kuyoth]

Chic,

I have a friend with a 250 that has the same mod. He told me that the STC to add the 5th seat is no longer supported/available. I have a copy of the drawings.

The conversion appears to me to be a rather large tear-up. The rear bulkhead/empenage close-out is heavily modified, the 2nd row seat frames are unique and bolt to the spar-cap and the foot well in the floor is fabricated from fiberglass. There may also be re-routing of control cables required. You may be better off just looking for a B-model, especially now since the price gap between A & B models seems to be narrowing, (just a casual observation from Trade-a-Plane).

I converted my '65 "A" model 260 from a bench rear seat to individual "B" model rear seats on tracks. I obtained the 5th seat STC drawings from my friend in case I needed supporting evidence for the FAA that this type of mod is common place. Turns out that since I used all "B" model components and copied the "B" model design, I did not need anything else to convince the FSDO of the validity of the mod.

Chris

[Chic Ritzheimer]

Thanks Chris. That was a picture of Keith Flower's plane. Boy was I a pawn on the sale. Take care.