Originally Posted by
mapleg
Every Air Canada flight lets you preview seats before you book. Pretty unlikely someone would book a J flight and not pick a seat at the same time.
None of my eUpgrades that have cleared in the last year+ have assigned me a seat. And lately they don't even notify me, so I can't do it myself.
You can very easily book J through any (O)TA without assigning a seat.
And I've seen flights that were J0 but had 10 open seats on the seat map.