Yes, as you imply it's not a guarantee, but usually whichever definite seatmap displays is what sticks. That all is also the case for the agnostic 753 map.

Most probably the seat map will appear about 60 hours before the time of departure. I think it's two days before the flight but it's just after midnight from I don't remember what time zone. You can switch seats from the moment of booking your flight up to the time of boarding your flight, which means that you can switch seats after the seat map appears. However, it's better if you select a seat in Rows 20-22 the earliest you decide that you want a seat in those rows. If not, other passengers will get those seats.

My 2-flight experience is 50-50. First one showed the new config at about T-48, and then flipped back to the old one about T-7. On the return it stuck, but it was IAD-NRT route, they have more flexibility for swaps at IAD than NRT.

I had the same experience of 50-50 on ORD-MUC-ORD in May. The ORD-MUC switched back to the old configuration at about T-9. The big problem is that I ended up in a way worst seat that my original seat in the old configuration. The computer decided that the best seat to place someone who had selected 3A in the new configuration at T-48 was 10A. Business Class was supposed to be full. It took lots of effort to end in a slightly better seat. Managed it due to the fact that there were some no shows. But there were a lot of passengers trying to switch seats after boarding and the GA came aboard with 8 new boarding passes. The return with no switch back to the old configuration let me keep seat 3A that I had selected at T-48.

Is there an ETA when PE will officially be rolled out? I assume that when this occurs, anyone with flights booked subsequently in rows 20-22 is going to get moved to another row?

B772 or B773ER
 

just got off of UA872 TPE-SFO normally operated by a B773ER with Polaris.
The aircraft according to flight status was swapped for a B777-200 (Aircraft#2136) with Premium Plus and the new Polaris.
However, it still appeared to be a B773ER with Polaris and the mini-economy cabin before is now 3 rows of Premium Plus.
The safety video still showed B773ER and the safety card was the B773ER.
Would have been okay with Premium Plus but was up front :cool: although the seats did look a little tigher than those on EVA or Lufthansa.

Interesting detail. The video has some Polaris hardware-specific details (the shoulder belt), but I don't remember—does the safety card say something? Otherwise it seems quite odd that the 773 card would be on the 772.

edit: ah, misread the above insight from jsloan. :eek:

Yeah, and Flight Radar etc show it was flown by a 77W as usual.

thanks... it was the united app status that still shows B777-200, maybe just a glitch.

At T-10 the 3 cabin 767 old-lhr0 switched to a new polaris configuration, two hours later it switched again to a 3 cabin aircraft - I retained my GF seat but then it switched again at 9-6 to a new polaris and at T-5 it switched to a 2 cabin old continental seating. I collected many boarding passes that day with different seat assignments.

Let's hope that your last seat assignment was acceptable. The one time that I had a switch and then a switch back on an international long haul, I had a hard time getting an acceptable seat.

Flight into HKG yesterday was configured with PE and showing PE for 20-22 out to SFO today. With 2 hours before flight time I'm hoping it holds and is true.

No one yet has indicated they'd actually flown the config....