Originally Posted by
Cupart
What's odd is that my partner and I (who always fly together) got seated on two different rows (4A and 5C) at the auto check-in so I obviously changed it to 4E and F which were all empty

The flight was packed so we wouldn't have gotten more space by placing us in two different rows

That happened to me a couple of times, and we are both (still) Plat and traveled on same PNR with same name ...