I am flying on Virgin tomorrow from the US to the UK. I bought a light fare, figuring I would go online at 24 hours exactly before flight and pick the seats I wanted (two aisle seats across from each other) with OLCI - which is what the VS website says.

I have been checking the seat map every day or so and there was row upon row without seat assignments.

Today, at 4 hours before OLCI, I went online and found that VS had randomly assigned seats (adjoining) to my companion and myself. Not only did we have seats, but from the way the seat map had filled up from the day before it appeared that others had also received unrequested seat assignments (including one passenger who was assigned the middle seat of 3 when the surrounding seats were empty.)

I got panicky that they might keep doing this so that I could not get the seat I would want at OLCI, so I spent the money to move one of our seats to another aisle seat.

As it turns out, there were some decent seats available at OLCI time - but many fewere than there would have been had VS not started randomly assigning seats. Also, if the flight were more crowded, the strategy of waiting to OLCI to pick good seats might not have worked if enough random seats had been assigned.

So be forewarned - if you wait until OLCI to pick a seat on a light fare, depending how crowded the flight is you may end up with the dregs.