Originally Posted by
martin33
some months ago they did roll out a greatly increased number of elite-only blocked seats. basically the whole zone is treated as if blocked, subject to assignment once departure nears...
That still works out a bit different than the situation being discussed here, because most (all?) of the time in rows of 3, those Preferred seats are windows and aisles, which still leaves the middle seat available for a non-elite to select at any time.