Originally Posted by
hughw
When wife and I fly, we select aisle and window in an E+ empty row, hoping that middle is unlikely to fill. Pre covid, I would guess we had about a 60& success rate....now, never.
Originally Posted by
ExplorerWannabe
In general, my observation has been that "empty" seats are filled with unassigned and then standby passengers from front to back. Even BE passengers sometimes end up getting seats in Economy Plus when they get to this point so you're probably best off trying to take a window or aisle as far back to Economy Plus as you can get while leaving the middle seat empty.
Empty middle seat in economy: between Platinum+ (window) and 1k + (aisle) is generally filled last after, all other empty middle seats fill between two lower or non-elite seat mates. This has been my experience flying as 1k for 20+ years and now lifetime GS (when I don’t clear upgrade). I even had it happen 2019 when my empty E + middle seat next to me was the “last one standing” on entire economy class.
This has happened fairly frequently (50%) even post-Covid travel recovery when most-all middle seats are increasingly filled. My last 6 UA flights in 2Q2024, 4 transcon SFO-IAD, and 2 international SFO-TPE segments, there were 3-6 empty middle seats in economy in each flight that I didn’t clear upgrade and was seated in aisle E +. As I watch T-1 and after checkin, I see that some E + and E - middle seats are filled by last minute purchases or standby requests, while 50% of time empty E + middle seat is open next to my aisle seat when flight takes off. When I ask my window seat mates if they are Platinum or 1k+, invariably it’s always yes when our E + middle seat is open.