WRXMOM, if she knew that the aisle seat was blocked, should have sat in the aisle seat. Rarely do last minute moves before takeoff try for a window seat over seated passengers. If she was unaware if it was blocked, or if it unblocked by the GA because of a full flight, she would scoot over when a pax with the seat assignment shows up. Otherwise an open aisle seat is in play if someone wants it.

Years ago on AA GRU - MIA, I had the agent put me in the middle seat, middle section of 5 seats across. He blocked the 2 seats on either side of me. I put as many items across all the seats and saw several people eye the end seats, getting ready to jump immediately after door closure, but I was able to block their move by physically moving to the end seat that they were eyeballing and leaving my stuff in the other end seat. This led to enough confusion as to which seat I had that I was able to lift the 4 arm rests and stretch out immediately across all 5 seats after takeoff, even though the flight was more than half filled. Better than F in my opinion.

-outoftown