Sorry, but wrong again! If you'd care to spend the next days/weeks checking 100 random seatmaps of longhaul LH flights (those that depart more than 24h from the time you check), you will find that 98-99% of them have free seats in exit row. On many flights, especially those between Germany and the U.S., ALL exit row seats will be free. Those flights are the most interesting ones for the UA crowd.

On LH shorthaul Y, ALL seat assignments don't start until 24h before departure, so within the 24h window, all seats (including exit rows) are fair game for everyone grasping the concept of telephone check-in. On my last 30 LH shorthaul segments, I sat in exit row 27 times. The three failures were as follows:

• Once it didn't work because the plane (AVRO) didn't HAVE an exit row. I reported that incident on FT.

• Once it didn't work because a CPT agent mistakenly assigned the wrong row, which I didn't realize. I reported that incident on FT.

• Once it didn't work because the C cabin curtin moved behind exit row, so it wasn't available to Y pax, anymore. I reported that incident on FT.

On the remaining 27 shorthaul LH segmemnts, I was sitting in exit row, usually travelling as a UA*G, not SEN.