My guess is this thread caused more of a commotion than this "scammer" did.

Somewhere upthread the OP noted the flight was only carrying 120 pax, so I'm guessing her late boarding seatmate just loaded the bag into the overhead and sat down.

+1 Had not occurred to me to use suitcase because I normally want to claim overhead space ASAP.

The real challenge is saving 3 seats for my family members including 2 aisle seats.

Just fly another airline if stuff like this bothers you.

And I just move it if I want to sit in it. Not new at all.

Exactly. The passive agressive types who come to FT to whine need to shift to agressive and simply sit in an unoccupied seat. If someone happens to have left a personal item there, courtesy suggests asking them politely to move their gear, but if they won't / don't, just move it or sit on it.

Yup. I've asked "Is this cellphone sitting in the seat yours"? and when the person seated in the bulkhead window seat says he is saving it for his friend (in the C group), I asked him to move it so we could sit. He refused and the FA told him that we were free to seat in any available seat. He huffed, and he puffed, and moved back to row 4 and kept .....ing..............

you do realize that you are entitled to do this as much as they are entitled to save the seat? So doing what you do puts you on the same level as them. If you are ok with that, then great. But don't make out that they are the bad guy or selfish or whatever unless you are willing to be labeled with the same moniker. It all boils down to how someone interprets "available".

I did make him out to be the bad guy. If he wanted to save a bulkhead seat, he should have paid for 2 early boarding fees, like we did. Instead he tried to get his friend the same benefit for free. I told him we were sitting there and paid the extra for the express reason of trying to get bulkhead seats, he protested, the FA told him that we were OK to sit there even though he "saved" the seat.

He continued to ..... all the way back to aisle 4, then tried to express his manhood challenging me from there.

You making him out to be the bad guy makes you a bad guy too. He did nothing wrong. Just because you don't agree with what he did doesn't make it wrong or him a bad guy. The fact that you feel the need to boast about it and point out that you won the battle of the wits seems to be you expressing your manhood.

I would guess that buying EBCI with the goal of getting two bulkhead seats is normally a losing prop bet.

No, "they" are no entitled to save the seat. WN does not assign seats and a boarding passenger may sit in any unoccupied seat (except the handicapped seats if required or an exit row if not qualified). Don't mistake the fact that WN keeps its FA's out of the mess for the fact that you have no ability to "save" a seat beyond asking another passenger who may want that seat not to sit there.

The later boarding passengers are then free to select any available seat at the time they board.

Under the assumption that most people who purchase air tickets know the first 3 letters of the alphabet and the numbers in sequence up to 60, the people who can't handle that are the ones who ought to fly another carrier which reserves seats.

Says who? You? Unless you are making policy this is just your opinion. The dead horse says anyone can try to save a seat and anyone can try to sit in that seat. How people act in those situations pretty much determines who is "the bad guy".

Sure they are. Southwest allows seat saving.

Do tell: What would have you done, had an FA then asked you to move from the bulkhead to accommodate a late boarding disabled passenger?

I find it hilarious that either side thinks they are more entitled than the other, when Southwest purposely has no policy granting any entitlement specifically to one but not the other.

The "bad guy" here is Southwest.