In the middle of that [AA suspends account (caught committing fraud)] thread, someone said something like "AA gets a lot of information about you when you book a ticket".

This is what I do, and I don't know if it's bad, but first up I'll say the reason why I do it, and if someone can help me with this FIRST part, all the rest will never have to happen again.

Before I book a flight, I like to see what seats are available. For some reason I cannot figure out how to do this on AA (please help). So, what I do, is start (not finish) a dummy booking - fake name, fake phone number, random DOB...just anything to get me to the "choose seats" page. What a pain this is.

I don't know if they "gather" all these fake starts of a booking, I never go to the "buy" or "hold" page, just far enough to see the seats.

So, twofold question (since I'm sure I lost a few of you):

1) How and where can you see what seats are available right away when you are looking at a schedule..

2) is it a problem to make the fake halfway booking to be able to see the seats?