Hiya

I'm flying my first long haul flight in November (PER-SYD-SFO) with a mate and am wondering how I would go about lucking into having the seat next to/between us free?

The Perth to Sydney part is fine, I'm used to being uncomfortable on the 4-odd hours it takes to fly across the country. It's the 13 hours it's going to take us to get from Sydney to San Francisco that has me hoping that the sleeping pills I'll be taking will put me into a coma right after the meal. I can never seem to get comfy on flights (after the inital child like squeal of excitement I make when we take off, I eat the meal and all of an hour into the flight I'm ready to bring the plane down myself I'm so bored).

We're flying cattle class and the seats are 3-4-3 and we're hoping to sit in one of the 3 seats together in the hopes that we can jag a spare seat between us. Would it best for me to request the window and my friend to request the aisle and hope that no one wants the middle seat or that no one is allocated that seat? This is of course assuming the plane doesn't fill up between now and November but so far there are quite a heap of seats still available on that flight.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.