I can't speak for E&Y but at my Big 4 the only people at the front of the plane were people who got CPUd due to status, generally these were partners and senior managers just because they travelled more. Once I shared a cab to the office with one of the Directors on my project, she was a 1K and I was Gold at the time, we were both delayed out of BOS and she could have gotten on an earlier flight and got to the office on time but said no because her CPU cleared into the later flight. I sat in E+ for that one. Domestic first wasn't allowed, for most purposes. The only exception I knew of is if you absolutely had to be somewhere at a certain time and there wasn't an economy fare available. Even then it was flagged as an out of policy booking and you can almost guarantee central finance would be emailing you about why you booked it, so you'd need manager approval for it. I mean they once hassled me over a cancellable hotel reservation because it was $20 more than the primary hotel we were supposed to use.

So I did what any respectable FTer would do. I cancelled the booking, waited for the preferred hotel to be sold out, and rebooked the hotel I wanted which while it was the same price as the original reservation, was no longer out of policy because the preferred hotel wasn't available. What a PITA.