...What strikes me is the rear seat passengers are practically sitting on the floor. Reminds me of those silly "3rd row" baggage compartment seats Beech added to the short body (55) Barons. I'll take and post a few pics of the seating in my Aztec tomorrow. There's storage space under the third row seats accessible from the baggage compartment. We use it to store rolled up items such as air mattresses, sleeping bags, etc on trips to OSH...
Here's a few pics of my Aztec for the OP. These are tremendous airplanes; unloved and under-rated. Except by those of us, including
@Ted DuPuis , who have owned and/or flown them.
I am 6'-4" and a svelte 240 lbs
, and at my advanced age I put a premium on space, comfort and utility over outright speed. I'll apologize in advance because my plane is a bit ratty; not nearly as nice as a great many of the other beautiful planes owned by the PoA cohort. Let me know if you need any more info.
3rd Row Seat: Note how it is
not on the floor, and the seating position is closer to sitting in a proper chair, and therefore more comfortable than some other airplanes. The headroom in this seat is enough for me to sit upright with plenty of space for my David Clark headset, without rubbing on the headliner (there wasn't anyone else around to take a photo of me to prove it
). The width at the hips (narrowest part at the base of the backrest) is 40 inches, the width at the shoulders is 36.5 inches. This is, of course, the "tightest" seat in the airplane.
2nd Row Seats: The next shot is with the 2nd row seats and the front row seats
all in their aft most position (if your leg inseam is less than 36 inches you will not be able to achieve full deflection of the rudder pedals without moving the front seat forward). The distance from the leading edge of the 2nd row seat bottom cushion to the front seatback is 17 inches. This is how my plane is most often configured - for 4 passengers with a ton of space. However, in this configuration the rear seat is used for cabin baggage only as the 2nd row seatbacks are right up against the lower seat cushions of the 3rd row.
2nd Row Seats: The next shot below is with the seats configured to carry 6. Note the front row seats (out of the pic) are still in the aft most position. Also, the 3rd row seat bottom cushion is exactly the same depth as the four seats in the front and middle rows - sometimes auto and airplane manufacturers shorten these up, at the expense of thigh support and passenger comfort, to make it look like there's more legroom in the back.
Baggage Compartments: The rear and nose baggage compartments are quite generous, with large access doors. Each is rated for 150 pounds. If I recall correctly Piper had an advert in the 1970s showing a couple of sets of golf clubs being loaded into the nose baggage compartment of an Aztec.
@Pilawt can probably confirm that. Despite the enormous cabin and decent legroom for all, there's still a very large rear baggage compartment. And the Aztec has an incredibly wide CG envelope, so most of the time the old adage "if it will fit, it will fly" is accurate. Even with 6 people the rear baggage is no where near limited to carrying ping pong balls.
