I flew from Tampa to Atlanta the other day and, miracle of miracles, the flight wasn’t full. I had the window seat and a nice young gentleman had the aisle seat. Early into the flight, he pulled out a copy of a hotel management magazine and we began discussing the hotel industry these days–how was business, etc. We realized that we felt quite “business class” having the empty middle seat, and how pleasant it was. We also remembered how nice airplanes can be for networking, and we both mentioned that it had been quite a while since we felt that way. That’s probably why, in part, when I was offered the chance to upgrade to business class for the transatlantic portion of my flight I jumped at it. There was one paid upgrade available on the Atlanta-London leg of my flight, I didn’t particularly like my coach seat, so I handed over my credit card and took it. My seat neighbor in Club Class on BA mentioned that, two hours before the flight, he’d only seen seven seats booked in Club. The flight was overbooked, so we guess that most of the seats were either upgrades for elite members, or a shuffling about of premium economy passengers into Club so and economy passengers into premium economy so that all those holding economy tickets could be economy. I do know that my upgrade was the last one that had an actual Club meal available. Paying to fill last-minute seats seems an ultimately sensible way to make a bit more money for the airlines. It was too bad that more meals weren’t available because they stopped selling the upgrades for that reason. Similarly, if the Tampa-Atlanta flight was so lightly booked, most of us probably would have paid a few extra dollars to guarantee that we had that middle seat free. Unfortunately the airlines aren’t set up for so much last-minute flexiblity, but as a suggestion–it’s a good idea! – Mary Hunt, editor, eFleyr