Originally Posted by
PETER01
According to
www.thebasource.com there are 4 out of the 28 747 Hi-J's which have 185 Y seats. The remaining 24 Hi-J's have 177 Y seats.
Economy rows on the 185 Y configurations have
16 DEFG seats which go up to row 55 where as the others only go up to 14 rows ending at row 53.
The 4 with 185 Y are
G-CIVF, G-CIVG, G-CIVH (all with NF) and
G-CIVI, the latter of which I believe is in for the NF refit.
So I was checking my First flight on expedia.com from MRU-LHR on the 23rd Dec which is up to row 55.
So if you do a dummy Y booking in expedia and it has row 54 and 55 on the seatmap I think you are gauranteed the NF product.
Almost certainly not guaranteed. Although that route has been operated by 772s recently there is some evidence from early July as to the 744s used on that route here:
http://ftdashboard.net/dest/mru.htm
During that period the aircraft used tended to be Hi-Js, but mostly the 177Y variants. It seems unlikely that any routes would exclusively use the 185Ys given their small numbers and the fact that they occasionally appear on most routes that use Hi-J aircraft.
That said nine of the 744s upgraded so far have been Hi-J (G-CIVI would make ten), so the chances are better than some routes, and much better than it would with a 772 on that route.
I guess the seatmap you've seen is probably just indicative.