Originally Posted by
Xandrios
The reason why this is only available for seats further back is likely because they will be trying to get 2 pax to pay for this benefit, and put them next to each other. Meaning that for this to work they need a row of 3 to be available, which is much more likely further down the back of the aircraft. Effectively you are not paying for an empty middle seat but only half of an empty middle seat.
I'm not sure how that would be possible, I assume that once paid then the middle seat will show as blocked in the seat map and the next pax who would like to use this option will have to go to the next row.
There are plenty of empty rows available in the purple zone between EC and emergency exit which would have made it a more tempting offer over a free EC seat. (with a currently empty middle seat, which they could also offer this on...)