Virgin Atlantic, circa 1996. My father and I were flying BOS-LHR... this happens at check-in:

AGENT: Oh dear... your seats were erroneously assigned to someone else (taps on his keyboard) shoot, flight is completely full - looks like all we have are scattered middle seats.

DAD: You don't have anything together? My son is only 10 and I don't want to sit apart from him for seven hours.

AGENT: Unless you want to fly tomorrow this is all we have. Tell you what, as soon as you get through security go straight to the gate and talk to the agent, I'm almost positive they'll be able to move somebody around so you can sit together.

He hands us our boarding passes and puts our bags on the belt. As we're walking away he calls us back.

AGENT: Hang on, I found a pair. Here's your new boarding passes.

My father looked at the boarding passes and his jaw dropped, they were for 1H and 1K

DAD: Thomas... you and I are both going to sleep very well tonight.

After that experience I've been finding ways to fly in front of the curtain ever since