Originally Posted by
Ditto
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.
It's shown in your first post.
You're being offered 24F (for free), or 24E&F (for a fee). You're not being offered 24DEF, so someone is already sitting in 24D.
Either they picked 24D as normal (for free), or they may already have been offered the 3 options; 24D or 24F (for free); 24DE or 24EF (for a fee) or 24DEF (for a greater fee).
I'm not saying this is conclusive proof that they have done it this way - but the system is set up to allow this. You don't know for sure whether the person who selected 24D bought a "free seat beside them" option or not, but it's entirely feasible for them to offer the same deal to a person wanting to sit in 24F.
Now that they are proactively offering such offers, presumably the seat map offering is tweaked to allow at least 1 or 2 rows to be "held back" to allow such offers to be made.