When we reposition most of the time we are in uniform because we are positioning to immediately fly or we just finished flying and are positioning in preparation for the next day. If we are done for the day some will chose to change out of the uniform.
Is the first row reserved for the positioning crew?
As far as business class or first class is concerned, the company really doesn’t think of us as royalty, we are just business tools. The company would stuff us in with the luggage, dogs and cats in the cargo compartment if they could get away with it to sell the seat we occupy. Thankfully, because we are represented by a union, we have a contractual right to a first class seat if it is unoccupied. First class is almost always full, so it becomes a mute point.
For what it is worth I do not think lowly of our passengers, I am glad to share a row with just about anybody and answer their questions (for the same reason I post on this forum-I enjoy aviation and like learning and answering questions). Collectively passengers pay my wages. About reserved rows, the gate agent will usually reserve an exit row for us, but that is not a requirement. They do the best they can.
Personally I think the gate agent has the toughest job in the industry, followed by cabin crew. I try to minimize any demands I place on them as a courtesy.
Do the cabin crew get questions such as 'why is the pilot sitting in the cabin'?
Could a regular passenger end up sitting next to a captain in uniform? (I pity the poor guy if he has to answer an enthusiast's questions
Yes we hear the same questions all the time.
if you are positioning to operate a flight/flights later in the day, are you 'on duty' with the FTL clock ticking? Or does it count as rest just as if you spent the morning at home?
Not only are we on flight duty time when we are positioning (FTL clock ticking), we are getting paid 100% of what we would be getting if we were flying. Again that is due to a strong union. To some this may seem overly generous; however it is important to give the company a strong incentive to minimize the unproductive use of its pilots by deadheading them throughout the system. Otherwise you would get much more of the nonsense, stated earlier by another poster, where his/her company deadheaded them on a long flight across the Atlantic, only to turn them around and have them immediately fly back.
You don’t want your pilots mind-numbed and fatigued then flying a difficult approach on the back side of the body clock having been up for 24-sometining hours. If pilots don’t put an end to such scheduling nonsense, they we have nobody else to blame, when creative minds in the accounting department come up with really efficient schedules (meanwhile they go home after a 8 day) that look really good on paper but shred human beings to pieces. There is a difference between legal and safe. And there is also featherbedding, overly generous abuses. Sometimes a fine line exists between the definitions. Unequivocally however; simply being a legal flight duty time assignment is not necessarily safe. That point of view is often missing.