Really?? I just can't get my head around the fact that this is always the case I can think of several occassions when I've been pushing it to make it the airport before check-in closes and just scraped in, and still managed to get my exit row seat. Surely if it was on a first-come, first-served basis, there's no way I could have been allocated an exit row seat when arriving so late?

And sorry Dave, I'm not trying to be argumentative at all I am just seriously scratching my head at how I've managed to be so successful in the past with my seating...the only thing that I could seem to attribute it to was being a QF FF?? I usually have the agent add a comment to my booking about being tall etc, could this be the point of difference perhaps?

Oh, and speaking of seating preferences, the one time I chose not to fly with Qantas (I flew SIA) I got stuck in the worst seat ever, and so have since believed it was the Qantas god's punishing me!! Seriously, I'm like the Pavlov's dogs experiment brought to life!!!!