Flybe dead head flight - only front and exit seats available
 

I'm flying out BHX-DBV tomorrow.

It is the last flight of the season, I would expect it to be almost empty, only people going to be using it will be returning Croatians or fellow independents who will work their way on and fly back from somewhere else on a year round service.

Firstly, BE won't let me check in at all - I thought that might be because I hadn't put in API, but that has made no difference (didn't think that would matter to Croatia anyway?).

Secondly, I wouldn't usually pay for an assigned seat, as there are usually plenty of single seats. However, given expected route down Adriatic, I'll pay £6.50 to secure a left window. Question is - why should I?

System is only offering me the front 2 1/2 rows or the middle exits. Usually these are prime seats. What about all the others? Surely they can't be taken? Even a busy flight has lots of gaps between families of 3, other single travellers etc.

Can anyone enlighten me?

Note - just also checked in for a Ryanair flight. They only offer the same rows (although on a 738, front two a aligned with each others), but there were at least a couple of mid seats taken. I understand the rest of the plane with FR is still free seating, whereas BE assign everyone a seat. I suppose they might not make the others free for allocation as anyone paying for seat allocated before the day of the flight would want a front or extra legroom seat.

Could be that with a potentially light load there might be an issue with weight & balance and therefore certain seat rows are deliberately blocked.

I wondered about that, but if so,surely the front and rear ones would be screened off.

Anyway, I have managed to check in now, seat 2A, no extra charge, will be interesting to see what the load is like tomorrow.

not a dead head flight but an empty leg
 

these flights at the start or end of a summer season are called
empty legs, not dead head as you describe.

dead head is a term for air crew non-operational travelling as pax sometimes
in jump seats.
duty travel is where airline staff or crew are travelling on duty and/or
positioning sectors in passenger seats.

empty legs were the pain of all tour operators and they always tried to sell one-ways as you describe but in the old days there were often regulations forbidding charter airlines and tour op's in selling these seats to nationals of the destination or origin.
rules are somewhat relaxed now to most places.

chances are yours maybe almost empty to DBV but you never know these days!

Myself and a friend flew from Newcastle to Monastir on the final Jet2 flight of the season a few years ago. We paid £13 each and there were a total of 10 people on the flight. No problem getting the emergency exit seats for free on that one :)

Seem to recall that Monarchs last ever LGW-GRX-LGW was priced at £3 outbound £290 inbound...