Eek, I have a stalker!

Yaatri, I will admit that my husband is quite a sparkler - so maybe I CAN fly him as my emotional support animal.

...if I'm sitting in cattle I am in close proximity to someone I'd prefer it to be my wife.
Also at 5'7" and 120 lbs she doesn't take up much width so I can encroach on her space.
When sitting in J it depends, if old timey J seats I still prefer since I can ask her to put down the shade etc.
On pods I could care less.

Yuck!
Of course he is. You should try that. Who knows! It might work.

The want to sit with your family SO is natural and well accepted.
Also the want to not want to switch from a preferred may be justified.

I would not subject a stranger in the middle seat to interaction between me and my companion sitting on aisle and window or two aisle seats in the mid section of a wide-body.

I have booked two windows and two aisle for my family in the hopes of having a middle seat free. If someone is seated in the middle seat we switch them so that we don't have to keep them sandwiched between us. I think it's rude to carry on your exchanges over the middle seat person.

My question is, why aren't all these couples and families booking seats together? I do.

Birds of a feather flock together. Maybe they're planning on "flocking" on the airplane?

Since passengers are treated like sardines, I'd rather be crammed in next to my husband than a stranger. We can have the armrest up, I can rest my head against his shoulder and he doesn't mind me leaning against him. I don't think a stranger would appreciate that kind of behavior from me.

Sometimes they aren't available. As people become more aware, more and more people are picking their preferred seats in advance. You will often find window and aisle seats gone in almost the entire length of the aircraft.

Sometimes you have to book them separately. On NW, Child fare had to be booked separately. If each person is using an e-cert, each person has to boo separately.

Given that people understandably prefer not to be crammed up against strangers, why would companions who both have middle seats think that a solo pax seated in the aisle seat beside one of them would be happy giving up that aisle seat (sitting next to one stranger) for the other companion's middle seat (in between two strangers)?

Clearly, the topic in this thread http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...atmate-up.html

seems to indicate that some would.

I don't mind sitting separate if it is just me and my spouse, in fact if we are booking early we will sometimes be those rude people who book 2 aisle seats. However, if we are traveling with our children, sitting together is absolutely important to me. I have been on 2 recent flights where we were not able to sit together and it was absolute torture. One was a situation where they rebooked the flight onto a differently configured plane, and another was to a funeral where we booked at the last minute and there were no seat assignments available. On the latter, they actually booked all of us randomly in middle seats around the plane, with both my 2 year old and 4 year old by themselves. That is apparently not supposed to happen (no kidding) and they had me literally in tears (didn't help that I was grieving) trying to sort it out. They asked for volunteers to give up their aisle or window seats so that we could sit with our kids, and NO ONE on the whole 200 plus plane would switch. Finally they just picked a couple of people and forced them to move (yes, they can do that) and we at least had 2 seats together in different parts of the plane. That flight was horrible, as I was with the 2 year old and lap baby, and couldn't use the lav or anything because no one was nearby to supervise my kids.

That's really sad for the people who had picked seats out ahead of time - I'd be very angry if I were forced to move. Funeral or not, there's no reason to make people move just because you have kids. IMO.

I wish "they" would force people who are obnoxious or rude to move if that would improve things. (Give those people a chance to behave better first.)

Are you serious? You clearly have no common sense (or experience with kids) if you: a) think it is reasonable to force a 2 yr old to sit by herself so you can have your assigned seat; and b) that sitting next to an unaccompanied 2 year would be a tolerable flight.

Flying is/was a special experience for everyone on this board...... and for me, special experiences are really only special if they are shared with a friend. Who are we to deny somebody else a special experience, IF it causes us no inconvenience.

(Personally, I almost always offer like-for-like, or like-for-better, when trying to sit with my wife. And if the other party says 'no', that's fine. So yes, my wife and I still like to sit together for 100K+ miles per year!)