I just tried this strategy with a reservation I have coming up. My family of 3 is sitting in a 4-seat row on a widebody. We booked aisle-middle and other aisle (leaving one of the middles empty). We chose a row near the back of the plane.

The flight looks pretty empty so I figured we had an excellent chance of getting the whole row to ourselves.

Well, the other day I check the seat map and lo and behold, even though there are dozens of empty seats in the rows in front of us, some idiot chose the middle seat in the row that my family is sitting in.

Who the hell chooses a middle seat near the back when there are plenty of empty seats in front of it??