I'm just a lowly QF Silver, trying to get a good economy domestic seat. The only technique I know of is to use online checkin at T-24 hours. Or, even better, checkin for a same-day return on the outbound at T-24 hours as well as the return at say T-34 hours.

The last few times I've gotten an appropriate sequence number (1 or 2) but the available seatmap was very meagre indeed. On 738s, all windows taken, all but 1 or 2 aisle seats taken.

How on earth did those passengers get their seat assignments? Is there a way to choose earlier? What does 'Preferred seating' mean anyway?