As we all know, seat blocking was an unofficial benefit of being an elite for a number of years. It allowed elites to sit in Y with the middle seat blocked until near the time of departure. This unofficial benefit went away in late 2007/early 2008 (if I recall correctly) and I'm wondering if folks think it ever should come back and if it will come back. The benefits to elites are obvious, but the cost to United may be slightly harder to quantify. I was hoping to sum up the costs in my first post here, but I was having a little trouble wrapping my mind around what they might be.

So... any thoughts on what the costs to United were, why it went away, whether it should come back, and whether it will come back? Hoping for more than just the standard response of "It should come back but it won't".