Thanks Newbie Runner. Am I to take it that the gray seats are either assigned or blocked? That seems to be my interpretation of the cabin shots from both sources. This would lead me to believe LH has indeed assigned our group seats, but still has blocked off seats for release after our sell date ends this week. I have now called LH and the agent was able to give me my assigned seat number for LH405. It was a C-aisle and I prefer the centre D-aisle so had her move me from 48C to 40D. Hope I have not messed up by losing a blocked centre seat between 48A and my old seat! At the moment the balance of row 40 (centre spread of four seats) is empty, so I will keep my fingers crossed that 40E remains that way...