With KLM, I flew IAH-AMS roundtrip twice this month and got very little favorable attention as a CO Plat by KLM. Was relegated to the very last row in coach on one of the flights to AMS. The forward elite section apparently is reserved for Flying Dutchman elites and not CO. An agent in Berlin did work some keystrokes and got me into the bulkhead row 11 for AMS-IAH and that was nice.

As for getting empty seats, my experience on four transatlantic segments was that ALL coach seats were taken. KLM is somehow bucking the trend of slack demand to Europe.