Originally Posted by
WHBM
The reserve a seat issue is a conundrum, because the casual (even in J) pax tend to book earlier, and pay a lesser fare, than the regular, higher fare, Golds and Silvers who commonly just book a few days before. And yet they can then find that all the "good" seats have gone to those who are one-offs who paid less. Highest fare, very regular traveller, worst seat.
How do you overcome this ? There's no golden way. You can do what AA do and not allow any window or aisle seat reservations for the casuals at all unless you have status until a few days out. Or you can charge, which causes a good few to wait until check-in.
BA have an internal system that prevents the seats most popular with their Gold members being offered for sale until T-24.