I decided to leave LGA from meetings a day early because of the weather and bought an LGA - ORD ticket last night, which I assume meant I was probably about the last EXP to buy a ticket. I thought I'd share some experiences.
1. The flight was zeroed out in all classes. I was in no hurry to get to ORD and checked with the AAngels when I got to the AC to see if they were taking volunteers for overbooking. I learned the flight was at zero availability but there was no oversell or overbooking.
2. The gate started calling out ConciergeKey members for preboarding by name They were very open that these were ConciergeKey members and U have never seen this before. There were 14 CK members on my flight. When I boarded, I saw several of them were sitting in coach.
3. I was in the mid-20's on the upgrade list (none cleared). So taking into account that there were 16 in F, that suggests to me that there were at least 30-35 EXP's on board the flight.
4. I thought it was odd that the GA's went to such care to preboard CK's (which I haven't seen elsewhere) but then boarded EXP's and PLT's together, which I presume made up the majority of the flight.
5. I learned that the 738 has 30 rows. The seats in my area must have been misaligned because it didn't seem like there was much leg room either. The flight attendants also have these things they roll down the aisle to serve drinks. I wasn't familiar with this
I should say that notwithstanding my experience in the far back of the plane, the FA's knew my name and were looking for me with the food and beverage cart.