At those times when many flights are delayed, the open seating system makes it possible to rapidly accommodate passengers on the next available flight until it's full. If seat assignments needed to be negotiated with the passengers changing flights, I doubt that the current staff could accomplish this feat in the available time. More staff would cost more money, increasing fares for all of us. Open seating is a godsend during irregular operations.
Also, most proponents of assigned seating appear to believe that they will almost always get their preferred seats that way, even if there are only 4 of those seats on a 137-seat aircraft. This seems like a fantasy scenario to me.
I've found that when booking less than a week ahead on other airlines I can't get a good seat unless I have elite status. Even then the better seats are often taken. Open seating gives me much better control of what seat I get when I'm paying full fare, and I can even change my mind at the last minute.
Limited assigned seating (say, the first 10 rows) for a modest charge (but no charge for a middle seat) at the time of check-in would be a good compromise. If the number of people using this feature were low enough, the additional headache for irregular operations would be minimal.
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