I had an interesting thing occur to me yesterday. I was in 1A coming back from Vancouver. There was a nice lady sitting next to me in 1B as we had our pre-flight drinks and such. Before the door closed, there was a little commotion happening between the gate agents and the flight attendants as there were only supposed to be 11 people in First Class, instead of the normal 12. Then, the lead flight attendant starts talking to the nice lady in 1B and says that the seat needs to go out empty, and that she'll need to sit in the back.

Later, I find out that one of the 3 pilots had originated in Houston that morning. For the return trip, he was to sit in the cockpit for takeoff at YVR and landing at IAH. The rest of the time, he occupied that seat for "rest".

I didn't get onto pda.continental.com since I was roaming, so I don't know how it showed on the site, but thought it might be timely to present this scenario.

Cheers.