I'm a big fan of the whole allocated seating thing...
It seems o make so much sense from Passenger and crew perspective...
1. No more worrying about ABP's (especially early pregnancy)
2. No more trouble with 'late' families
3. Boarding would be easier and faster
4. No trouble about saving seats for WCH passengers
...and I'm sure there are many more good reasons....from lost property to naughty passengers...
On the other hand it's not really clear to me where the big savings come in for easyjet by not doing it. You still could do it without a ticket as long as it gets on the boarding card... Virgin for example has a great system where you can pick your own seat online...and you can see which ones are still available and which ones are not....it could even be a feature to pay for....I'm sure people would rather pay for an assigned seat than for Speedy Boarding that doesn't work half the time...
Anyway, still waiting for an official response to crew continuing doing the seatbelts and the sickbags...