Originally Posted by
drewguy
Not necessarily . . . .while some seats may open up then, others may open up afterwards as silver status people select their E+ seats a bit after 24 hours.
Right. Actually the best advice for the OP would be to see to accept whatever seats are available at T-24 hours, and if what he ends up with is sub-optimal, keep checking. He can always change them if something else opens up. Because the E+ cabin has a lot of availability, chances are good that he'll find what he needs.
Originally Posted by
Mike Jacoubowsky
This is true. Even the experienced traveler will often switch flights to get better seats; if you've got a situation like the OP, where seating is important and UA isn't providing the options you need on that flight, you should book elsewhere or on a different UA flight that does give such options. If the OP booked UA because it was the cheapest, without thought to other important considerations... well, lesson learned for the next trip.
Yeah, except that even when you've selected the perfect seats - and maybe paid a bit more for a flight with better seats - there's nothing to stop UA from substituting an aircraft, randomly booting you from your assigned seats sometime between booking and the flight, or assigning you a vicious or ignorant check-in agent who moves you for reasons of his/her own. All of these things have happened to me and/or my family - and that doesn't include run-of-the-mill weather-related and other cancellations and rebookings, in which you and your traveling companions end up in middle seats distributed throughout the plane (or on different flights entirely).
Because seat selection is far from guaranteed, it's far down on the list of creteria I use for selecting one flight over another.