Originally Posted by
oliver2002
Seat blocking work for me in general, I try not to book a seat in the front few rows though... for some reason some SENs will pick even a middle seat as long as they can sit in the 'preferred zone'. Altea theoretical seating will place SEN + companion on light fares in the 'zone' too, which leads to strange situations. The other day we go seated in BCDE automatically 🤦♂️
The SEN blocking definitely works quite reliably and I noticed it to keep my neighbor seat blocked on a full domestic flight with just 1 or 2 free seats in the entire cabin.
Now here is what happened:
I had a seat reservation for 11A in the emergency row, 11 B empty and 11 C occupied by a lady who had actually paid for this "XL" seat on the 320neo.
When check-in opened, I noticed at T-30 that out of the blue LH moved curtain to row 15 and robot put me into 15A. This is what I got to start with.
Eventually the cabin filled up quickly and as a result, the evening prior to departure LH moved the curtain back forward to row 10 leaving rows 10 to 14 almost empty.
I then grabbed back my seat 11A and 11B got blocked again once more.
Still the cabin ended up full after boarding completed but just 11B stayed empty.
However, the flight attendant then fetched the lady with original seat 11C assignment who got bumped backwards by the robot to 22D it moved the curtain! She complained to the crew that she paid for an XL seat and got nothing!
So in the end the nice lady got her paid XL seat eventually albeit a middle seat and overriding the seat blocking outside the system.
Still it demonstrates how solid seat blocking actually works, lol.