airlines purposely keep 1 or 2 seats blocked to accommodate mis-connects. To sell those last 1 or 2 seats for dirt cheap means the airline may then have to pony up more money to compensate their mis-connects, and possibly lose business from the mis-connect pax, and in addition, it will then train people to wait until the last minute to buy those last 1 or 2 seats. Mis-connects is a huge cost to airlines in the US because of our hub model. In other countries, where each route is almost 95% O/D traffic, mis-connects become a rather rare problem.

Maybe the airlines should start investing in high speed rail service along the east coast. You can make a train ride quite comfortable with the right hardware. Some of these small commuter flights don't make a whole lot of sense along the east coasts...