I agree, as sad as it is, exiting the plane is a good option and gets more attention focused on the issue. Then the emphasis is it get you happy and back on the plane, as opposed to just sitting there as a captive audience while it is "being discussed".

On a similar vein....I was traveling NWA, LAX-NRT in Y, Nov 2000 (before joining FT, naturally ) and discovered much to my horror, that on this particular row, the 2 seats (window/aisle) had about 4" less pitch than all the other rows -- must have been 28-29", godawful. I used my carryon to actually "relative measure" the pitch. It was just this row, not any other on the plane!

I hadn't asked for an exit row seat, didn't think to at the time But I flagged down a FA, showed her how my knees were jammed 2" into the seat ahead of me, and poilitely asked if I could switch to the exit row after we were in the air, if it wasn't already occupied.

"No sir. you cannot, this exit row is reserved as crew rest, and not only that, but we use it to turn around our carts for service. Please take your seat as assigned."

I was pretty mad, and so I took her advise to "take my seat as assigned", and marched off the plane to get a new seat assignment. Which one? None other than exit row we had got been discussing. No problem at all. Got back on the plane, left my boarding pass out where she could see it, and I didn't care if she glared at me the rest of the trip, in fact I rather enjoyed it.

I couldn't believe that she would have let me go 10 hours in that nasty row, if there was another available.

Then...just before pushback, there was some shuffling to get a family moved together, and another pax was moved to the row I left (by the same FA as before, no less). I watched some terrible movies that flight to deafen out the screams coming from that seat. I did feel a smidgen bad about it, just not as bad as it would have felt otherwise.

So I echo the comments from other posters. If the seat is not comfortable, especially those long flights, consider all the options. @:-)