Originally Posted by
jrl767
stop it; you know full well that’s not always possible
Nowhere in the article does it say that they bought their tickets inside the T-24 hour window and were unable to get seats together, or that absolutely NO seats were available together when they bought their tickets. It just said the plane was full. That is often true at boarding, but certainly not on the seat maps at greater than T-24 the vast majority of the time.
So until we hear otherwise, they were expecting the benefits of a higher fare class without paying for it.