Is UA now blocking adjacent seat for elites on CRJ200s?
 

Or did I just get lucky....

In the last few days, I have have had two (ugh) CRJ200 flights. At exactly 24 hours, I do OLCI to switch seats to 1B (for at least a tiny bit of legroom and to be first off this miserable excuse for an airplane).

Both times when I did the seat change, 1A was showing as open on the seat map. After I checked in, 1A was showing as taken.

Neither plane was full and indeed there was no one in 1A on either flight.

Perhaps an attempt to avoid any potential weight & balance issues where they might have to move pax around? Just a thought-not a good one but the only thing I can think of

PMUA always blocked seats A and D in rows 3 and 4 for weight and balance (window seats in 3 and 4) on the CRJ200. They were almost better than the exit row.

Two CRJ200 flights this week and I noticed that those seats are not blocked on the new United. At least I didn't lose my exit row seats in the system integration.

IMHO, nothing is ever better than the exit row isle seat on this plane. YNMV.

I think it would be better to say this would be that every other seat is worse than the exit row aisle seats. :D

I actually prefer a different seat than you; I dislike it less than every other seat on a CRJ200.

No they didn't.

Happened again this week.

At OLCI, changed to 1B (both 1A and 1B were showing open). After changing, 1A shown as occupied. This persisted all the way to boarding. In fact, I went to the gate agent and showed him the iPhone seat map showing that 1A was occupied and he said "there's nobody in that seat."

PMUA only blocked these seats for about the past year prior to 3/3--but yes, I believe it was due to preventing W&B issues.


Row 2 is my choice--the exit row simply doesn't have much extra legroom (1" would be a generous estimate IMHO), and I would rather be able to get off the plane as quickly as possible than have that extra 1" of legroom. I avoid row 1 since it's the bulkhead, has no better legroom, and means overhead space is needed for everything.

1B does have better legroom since you can stick your legs out into the aisle, since the bulkhead only covers about 1/2 of your lateral foot room space (unlike, say, 1A or 1D, which are truly the most awful seats on this most awful of planes). But you're right about the overhead issues, and I will usually only change to 1B if I have a decently timed connection so I can be first on the red, uh, blue, carpet.

Always is the wrong word, but yes they did block those seats from November 2011 to 3/3.

Yep, can confirm this fact. So sad that I became a CRJ200 expert flying UA:o