Originally Posted by
MathMusic
Believe it or not, AA's IT holds a seat and creates a booking record for you before you get to the point where you can view the seat map. It's not obvious but that is what they are doing under the hood.
You might notice these temporary bookings briefly showing up in your AA app if you get to that point again. There is a better way of viewing the seat map I referenced above that doesn't require a partial booking to view.
That may have been true in the past, but you can look at seat maps *without* doing a partial booking. They're accessible directly from the flight search results by clicking on "seats" for any of the flights shown below. It displays all cabins which is nice when trying to assess upgrade chances.
