Originally Posted by
sammy0623
I think it's pretty clear what she was trying to do (assuming she didn't know it was a completely full flight). She was doing the opposite of unite the couple. Instead of taking the middle seat and hoping someone would move over, she instead took the middle seat to start, hoping that
A-you'd figure someone was sitting in either the aisle or window
B-even if you or someone else took one of those seats, the other would be open when everyone boarded-leaving an open middle
I know what she was TRYING to do, but I don't see how she could have expected it to succeed. After all, if the flight weren't sold out, I could pretty much count on the fact that if we ended up with an empty seat in the row, she WOULD move rather than voluntarily continue to sit in the middle and leave the aisle empty. (And, as the flight filled up, she had every incentive to move sooner, so that SHE didn't get stuck in the middle). Thus, I had nothing to lose by sitting next to her.
The whole tactic just seems to me to be a less-sophisticated and less-likely-to-succeed version of taking a seat and putting your bag/lunch/whatever in the seat next to it.