Originally Posted by
rcs85551
I believe you completely misunderstand the soft seat blocking. It never works in advance of the flight - it always works only once the flight opens for CKI. Y, C and F.
And then it works even if the cabin is expected to be full. The FM / the gate has to unblock those seats later on.
I see you examples and this is, what I said. When handing over a flight to the airport for CKI there is a chance the seat gets blocked by the system. This is the "-" sign in your examples. But each checkin agent can easily overwrite it, when someone asks for such a blocked seat.
The other thing is, often when I arrive at the arport and ask CKI to confirm the blocked seat next to me they say, there is no such seat blocking. Just disappeared.
If the seat is still free and they don't expect a full cabin they usually put the seat blocking marker in (again). Then the chance is good to end up with a free seat next to one.
You may call it soft seat blocking. I would only call it random behaviour based on my experiences made as a HON often travelling on full fare F.