Originally Posted by corporate-wage-slave

Well there are two points to be made here. This forum is understandably very focused on seat selection, out in the real world many passengers aren't that bothered - a fair chunk of status passengers don't get around to selecting seats. It just isn't something they worry about when they can select seats at OLCI. I tend not to bother on short haul, particularly now that Theoretical Seating is out there. More to the point here, though, is that the reason the First cabin gets opened is because of high sales, so these will typically be in the final few days before departure. So at that stage passengers typically won't be able to select seats, status or no status, so at OLCI First needs to be used, and it will be pre-populated with the status passenger who are not yet seated. In Club a lot of sales are made in the last 2 weeks before departure.