udi,

I thought of the same idea, but never tried it. I don't think this is a good place to tell these kinds of things because of who might be watching; we should use email instead.

I decided it was a bad idea to book an extra seat because although the airlines might have a difficult time proving that an additional seat was purchased with the intention the ticket would not be used, if they catch on, they might take a very dim view.

When airlines attempted to cap travel agents commissions, an irate travel agent in Texas booked, with refundable tickets, almost every seat on a Delta flight. As far as I know, since there were no passengers to use the tickets, the flight flew almost empty. I know that Delta filed a fraud(or similar) suit against the travel agent. I never found out the result, but I would think that Delta would have prevailed because the travel agent intentionally set out to deprive Delta of revenue. Anyone know the results? Although the empty seat issue is slightly different than that with the travel agent, I would think it would still be considered a form of "fraud". I guess you could always produce the passenger that would say they really were intending on flying in the extra seat, but in a formal inquiry, this wouldn't work...as Mr. Clinton found out the hard way.