I've decided to use my last remaining 6-7k EY miles (plus £12) to book 69D on the A380.
Seemed like a small price to pay for amazing legroom (I've been in the same seat on BA's A380) - full price was 260AED.

Was just you or family? how early did you check? i believe you can choose seat under 4 hours prior to departure. did you try changing the seat online wihtout any fee under 4 hour?

This was for just 1 person. Checked in at the 30-hour mark. I couldn't risk waiting till reaching the airport (4 hours before departure when airport checkin desk opens) to try and get a non-middle seat, so have no idea if it becomes free then. The checkin agent at the desk did tell me that he could have assigned an aisle for free at that time, but that is essentially useless info since there was no way of knowing if any such seats would remain open before then.

The seat selection process was even worse for the return!
I just checked in for BOM-AUH-IAD, For BOM-AUH it auto-assigned the very back row, despite many many open seats throughout. Thus paid to move forward to an extra legroom seat. Fortunately the cost was reasonable.

But for AUH-BOM, it auto-assigned a window (19K) in the front section which would otherwise be USD 60.
However, my wife prefers aisle, esp for such a long flight. But to move from this high-price seat to an aisle seat in the middle or back (which are cheaper at either 50 or 40 dollars) requires payment. I even called up EY, and they confirmed that yes, to select anything other than the auto-assigned seat would incur a cost.

So now I know that if flying EY from US to India I'll have to add roughly USD 150 above the ticket purchase price when comparing to other options.

Hi guys. someone can please clarify the 4h thing?

To choose free seat, you have to wait to do the check-in until 4hrs prior to departure? Then you do online or counter check-in?

Or you can do online check-in first, get assigned the random seat, and then swap it (again online or at counter desk?) in the last 4hrs prior to departure?

Hope someone can enlighten this

I think that doesnt work anymore. I would check in online as soon as possible and then maybe you can change it for free at the airport. Maybe someone can try it and let you know

Is earlier the better as it appears that Etihad auto assigns seats starting from the rear ?

Also, does Etihad increase the seat prices close/during check-in like some US budget airlines or do they stay the same ?

To answer my own questions -
I checked in about 20 hours before the flight and got auto allocated a second to last row seat on my short haul flight (~ 4 hr)
but an extra legroom seat in the front for the long haul. So it seems totally random.

The seat pricing did not change during check-in compared to earlier.