Used to do this quite a lot coming back from Kazakhstan at Schiphol. You could not book the earlier connecting flight to Aberdeen as connection was too tight but if the Kaz flight arrived early, always used to ask if could go on the earlier flight and 9 times out of 10 they let us. Obviously without hold luggage and standard economy ticket.

Three weeks ago on a route to Edinburgh from Valencia via CDG, we had the last flight of the day back to EDI booked. However, we arrived in CDG and noted the earlier EDI had a delayed departure and went to lounge and asked AF lady there if there was any possibility of getting on the earlier EDI flight - she told us to take a seat and 5 minutes she came to us with two new boarding passes. Obviously once again we had no hold luggage and our tickets were not flexible ones. We are both platinum so I guess this helped.