Originally Posted by
Proudelitist
Yes, but equivalency doesn't have a relevence.
It's really all that matters. In the process of boarding people select different seats. The people following then select form the remaining available seats. As long as a person is able to select an equivalent seat there has been no negative impact.
It's available options and their quantity that matter. Front, back, left side, right side, row numbers...preferences vary between people, but what remains the same is the monetized offering of greater choice. Each line cutter..which is what a saved seat is in a BP numbering system...removes 1 option, and each position back from A1 produces a diminishing return even without seat saving. But when someone saves a seat, that return is diminished even faster.. The available options drop. The bang for my EBCI or BS or AList buck diminishes. It's not the seat, it's the availability that I was promised. Worse, the B person whose companion was saving the A seat, and who didn't pay for EBCI or BS or A-List effectively stole the value of my purchase.
This totally ignores the probability that some passenger will have chosen the particular seat a following passenger might have chosen. As long as an equivalent seat is available the later boarding passenger has suffered no loss. In some instances one passenger may have saved a seat for a later boarding passenger and the later boarding passenger's boarding position is later than the passenger who saved the seat. In that case there was no negative effect.
Tonight my A-list+ wife boarded at A 20. She sat in the aisle seat of the LUV row (her preferred seats when we travel together). As A-List I boarded at A 35. None of the intervening 15 passengers attempted to sit in the "middle" seat in the LUV row. When I arrived I took the aisle and she moved to the "middle" No one was even aware she had "saved" a seat. No one was negatively impacted however some other couple who prefer the LUV seats may have been displaced. This happens to us from time to time. When it does happen the later boarding companion is usually much later than we usually are. We are disappointed but even if that seat wasn't "saved" neither of us would have taken the other seat in that row.
I think the way WN could effectively police it is to PUBLISH it, and ANNOUNCE it at the gate and onboard. They shouldn't be policing it by hovering over every row during boarding, but they could certianly put it on the PA and pick a side when there is a conflict.
Good luck with that people regularly ignore announcements including the Southwest employees handling boarding. As described above a lot of seat saving involved making a particular seat less desirable.