Hi,

As some of you know, AA no longer provide seat blocking for their elites. So in effect, folks who haven't been assigned a seat, can pick any seats they like when checking in online or via self-checkin machines.

Now that got me to wonder what seats they pick. If there are only middle seats available, do they tend to pick available middle seats near the front rather than in the back? And thus the middle seats near the front are more likely to be occuipied than middle seats in the back by departure time?