Originally Posted by aionesu

I know this thread is mostly about employees sitting up front, but I've seen the opposite as well... we were on a YUL->CDG flight in paid J (well, P) and there were about 5-6 empty seats (on the HD, mind you). We asked the SD if our lap infant could, during the night, sleep on one of the empty pods instead of on our laps. The SD told us "I'll try to see if I can -- there are a few SEs that I have to bring up from the back". Ultimately, only 4 SEs came from Y, which left us the seat for our daughter... but it was still a bit of a shock to me to see the SD voluntarily and quite openly op-up all of the Y SEs...

Now I'm willing to believe that maybe at the door, it looked like the cabin was full, and a large family missed the flight, so the upgrades were done in the air (with the credits being written down by hand and then uploaded), but whenever that's happened it was while verifying with the gate agent and the door open/closing... not 15 minutes after takeoff in mid-air.