Saying that the best seats in J can only be pre-assigned by customers eligible to premium seating (elite + and full fare) would simply be implementing what LX does for the 'thrones' in J and BA for row 1 in F.

For once I will disagree with bodory and personally wish they would even go all the BA way. I don't see it as a way to charge and extra €50 because people can certainly choose their seat at OLCI and get whatever they want, but elite plus and full fare customers would get 'first refusal' by being able to pre-assign those earlier (or people who really care about a specific seat could pay for it). As it stands, frequently, I have had to book relatively late J trips on AF and there is no good seat left (certainly no window) so I have to take what is left. On BA, I essentially never have this problem and to be honest, even though I have (sadly) enough other reasons to often prefer BA, what seat I can get would be another one pushing me the BA way as a high status frequent flyer with both airlines.

I am clearly against measures that reduce the benefits of one category to make the people who keep the benefit feel superior, but this is entirely different: it is a case where the only way to ensure that high status and full fare paying customers have privileged seat access is to "protect" the best seats for them. It is already done in Y and I don't see any reason why it should not be the same in W or J. Ultimately, on a 1-2-1 reverse herringbone layout like the one adopted by AF, everybody recognises that the solo seats tend to be particularly desirable. Why would it be wrong to say that they should be available to a €7000 full fare J customer or a "preferred status" customer such as Platinum in priority over a promotional DL Z €2000 customer without any status who booked earlier than them? Just saying that that status-less deep discount customer could get that best seat for free before would just be conservatism for the sake of it. I accept that some think that J should come with free-for-all seat assignments without preferred seating kept for elite but then I don't really see why one should not say the same about Y. And to me, the BA way is another good method and one I find rather better than many others when we know that airlines try to get ancillary revenue anyway. I personally prefer it to Hop!'s way to sell miles to passengers which precisely does not create greater choice for high status passengers.

Finally, for the sake of balance, I will add that BA's seating policy is one of the most frequently debated themes on the BA forum. Regularly, passengers are absolutely outraged that after they bought a business class seat, they need to pay extra if they want to pre-assign. However, in those many debates (which one can easily access with a search and makes for entertaining reading! ), a vast majority of BAEC Gold and Silver members clearly love the BA system.