Those nice seats are indeed preferred seats. Only free for SEs. They used to be free for Es too. But since AC implemented the charge for preferred seats, they only allowed SEs to pick these for free. It was considered an improvement of benefits by SEs as there will be less competition from the Es to pick these seats.

AC tried to pull this off last year in the middle of the qualification year and caused a riot on FT. They immediately backed down. But in the next qualification year, they implemented it.^