Lufthansa Airlines from Germany is going to be spending the next year installing new seats in its short haul fleet of Airbus 320 and Boeing 737 aircraft. These seats have been redesigned and are much slimmer than the current seats. While they are bringing in a large number of new services and products on these flights (including a new food offering which has made me realise that I missed lunch today!), the thing that really interests me is that the seats are a lot lighter than the previous version.

Each of the new seats is 4.23kg lighter than the old ones, meaning that each row of seats is more than 12kg lighter. That is equivalent to an almost 30 percent reduction in weight, which in turns lowers fuel consumption. The empty weight of a Boeing 737, for example, will be reduced by more than 300kg. In addition, Lufthansa is pioneering the use of a lighter, chrome-free leather for the seat upholstery. It has also gone as far as making the hole in the seat belt buckle slightly larger – saving around 60g per seat through this alone! In all, Lufthansa will be replacing around 32,000 seats across the fleet.

The Lufthansa move follows a similar project at its sister airline, Swiss, which installed ultra-light carbon-fibre seats in its entire regional and European fleet. The project, completed in the spring of 2008, resulted in a reduction of over 800 tonnes of CO2 emissions each year.

And if you are wondering where all those old seats go – they get reconditioned and recycled. In fact, if you want to buy an old recycled seat from Lufthansa, you can do so through this site.