are 3A,C reserved for Iberia elites?
 

Called Iberia to grab some intra-Europe seats; EF showed 3AC open on each of the segments, not much else, but when I called IB res the moderately surly agent insisted that those seats weren't available and gave me others that in each case seemed worse.

AFAIK those seats are not reserved for elites.

Well, EF has been less than the paragon of airline wisdom in the past, so I suppose their IB seat maps could also be useless. I should have checked EF to see if the seats I was assigned disappeared at that moment (suggesting that EF was probably accurate and the IB agent was taking it on herself to save the seats for real IB customers instead of OW drop-ins on AA PNRs - flights are in the next few days and I was asking for the last pairs of seats in some cases).

Perhaps it depends on how many days you mean by "a few". I don't remember now how many days before, but I do know seat allocation goes to airport control well before the flight. Maybe that was the reason. Maybe.

The first segment, DUB-MAD, in the deed turned out vastly different from plans of a day earlier. Then, EF showed the front cabin with 5 rows, full save for 4 or 5 seats. We were given 2A and 5F iirc. 3A/C was the only open pair on the EF map.

At the airport we had no problem getting reassigned to 2A/C. 5F had disappeared - the cabin had been re-curtained to just 3 rows.

Unrelated and not a complaint - service was good enough - the crew had the worst command of English I've ever heard. In an emergency I doubt they'd even have bothered trying anything but Spanish.

Further off topic, Iberia and BA both use the Anna Livia lounge. I'd concluded the opposite from searching. It's small and offers little more than beverages and cookies (and 3 free Internet terminals), but beats the very crowded general areas.

3A-3C are blocked on Iberia for "unacompained children", at it seems to be hold till last moment, several times I tried and just on the airport they release that seats at check-in.