Way back before 9/11, I used to fly on very small planes from MKE-MSP.
One sunny day about 4 of us got on the plane, that held about 20 passengers, and all sat in our assigned seats. We looked around and one guy got up and said "I'm upgrading to first class" and went and sat in row 1. The other 3 people and I had a good giggle, thinking why didn't we think of that first!
In those days, just a pilot and co-pilot, no FA and they used to leave the cockpit door open so you could see out of the front windshield as we were flying.