Originally Posted by
greasy
You could be right. I was just trying to move around, and the 'ghost' is indeed following me after a few minutes after I picked en empty 3 seater row.
It sure seems like an automatic block. Learn something nice about AA today.
Alaska Airlines consistently blocked the seat next to me whenever I had a lap child, both when my (then-Platinum, back when AA and AS had reciprocal elite recognition) AA number and my (then-no status) AS number were in the record. Speaking to AS agents, they consistently spoke of an "infant block" as policy, though I don't think AS has anything publicly written about that policy. The behavior was exactly as you describe: whenever I changed my seat, the seat map on alaskaair.com showed the seat next to me as occupied while ExpertFlyer showed it as blocked. So I think it's hard to describe this as anything but a deliberate blocking of the seat next to you by AA. ^
Note that AA (edit: with the pmUS reservation system) never did this for me when I had a lap child.