Seat allocations in a half full 717

[jukebox333]

About a year ago I flew on a Qantaslink 717 flight Newman to Perth on a midweek afternoon. The flight was less than 50% full, but the seats were allocated so that only the first 10 or so rows were used, and everyone was packed together.

Is this a normal procedure? I remember thinking at the time that I would rather have had the pax spread out so that in the event of an emeregency evacuation, all the exits could be used - looking at the seating plan, the four overwing exits are the main ones, and having all the pax on one side of them can not be the best way for a speedy evac...

I assume it made the food/drinks service easier, but perhaps was also because of CoG weight distribution?

Any thoughts?

 

[ftm]

I think the 717 can be quite tricky to keep in balance when there is not a full load. With the engines down the back, it has a tendency to get tail heavy, hence the loading of pax in the front.

When they were operating them on the east coast a few years back, I remember there often being seats blocked off for that reason...