Ok, so answering my own earlier question about managing bookings... because I made a booking an hour ago!
- As reported by @jsoprano in July, you can now do successful seat selection during booking with QF.
- You can manage your booking on the QF site and make seat changes and add special meals
- You cannot access your booking via the CI website (as has been the case for a few years)
- You can access the booking via the CI app as long as you can divine what it thinks your first name is (often firstnamemiddlename, no space), however, you can't make any changes
- You can still make modifications on the soon-to-vanish Czech Airlines site (but right now it seems to be geoblocking some Australian or non-European IP addresses).
And it really is the case that CI availability is very thin compared to last year and the years since CI became available via QF. I was booking six months out, which while rarely rich with options has usually had a few J seats per week. This time all I could find was PY.