In my travels with EK, I only once have not had my first food choice, so - even if it won’t worry your brother - chances are he’ll be ok on that count. As far as broken seats are concerned, I would be mightily surprised if they knew which seats (if any, this is not a regular occurrence but it may happen) are broken at the time they assign the seats.
i suspect that the post which mentions these shortcomings had a dose of tongue inserted into the cheek......