Many thanks for the response! I have now managed to secure 11A further to numerous phone calls. Basically I had to wait until I was able to speak to an agent who could be bothered to ask the UA helpdesk to assign the seat to me. The issue was the fact that I am using miles and that Apollo chooses to ignore any FF cards on award bookings! Would have much preferred to fly on the 1500 763 but no seats available :-( They said they would not preassign Exit row seats as I did try to get 9A! Thanks for your help anyway...very much looking forward to this trip!
dcGs