Originally Posted by SS255

And that family of four, who typically would have reserved 4 seats together in advance (or 2 and 2), will now be split into 4 middle seats. And they will expect those of us who purchased fares which enable advance seat assignments to take their inferior middle seats. Multiply that by the number of families on the plane and I can see this turning into a seat war very quickly.

And it makes you wonder if elites buy these fares which don't entitle them to MCE, will a gate agent put such an elite traveling alone in a single middle seat so that the family of four non-elites can get seats together in MCE?

I think that these fares will ultimately be more disruptive to ALL elites than just leaving things as they are.