Just booked a longhaul flight for Madame and I. Paid ticket for me, award ticket for her, thus separate PNRs.

On my PNR, I have seat 5A on the A330. I then booked her ticket, and the only two seats that showed up were 7K and 7J. So I put her in 7K. I then go back to my own reservation, wanting to change my seat to 7J - but all the seats in the cabin are taken!

As I find it odd that someone has grabbed that seat in the 45 seconds that I went from her reservation to mine I go to expertflyer to first check the load of the flight: still 3-4 tickets in Business Class in the various classes (J, C, etc). I then check the seat map on expertflyer and I see that the seat next to me and the one next to her are blocked, as are a couple of other individual seats.

So what happened was that as soon as I picked her seat the system blocked the one next to her. Both she and I are Elite (Platinum).

Is that a new feature? I would really welcome it (even if on this flight it doesn't suit me, but I usually don't travel on separate PNRs with her but alone).

Other people have similar experiences?