How extraordinary! I've never seen anybody fight so hard, so tenaciously, and with such an auto-destructive strain of energy to support an idea that absolutely nobody can bring themselves to agree with.

Even though some kind of random allocation of priority would be of most benefit to me (I'm usually in the cheapest seats, if I'm in anything higher than Y it's usually because of some fluke or freak or FT related occurrence, so lets face it, my only chance of priority would be through chance) even I don't think this is fair.

At least by giving priority to elites and those in paid higher classes, regardless of any kind of 'OK' on anybody's tickets, it gives a chance for pax to 'buy into' the priority, and hence security, they may possibly need to run their businesses/lives effectively.

With random allocation, nobody has this security.

If the OP is prepared to pay up to 20 times the ticket price in order to climb the pecking order, I don't understand why the grumbling when people who did pay more for their tickets were given priority instead, or why feel that this was an unfair situation.

I am sympathetic, but the OPs position seems to shift so much I can't figure out why the original situation seemed so unfair or what he/she feels the best alternative should be -the proffered views and opinions seem to mostly contradict each other.

I've no better suggestion than the way airlines currently allocate their tickets, even though I'm never likely to benefit from it.