British Mediterranean turned up at Inverness last night in a strange way.

We had gone down the night before on the BMI A319 from Heathrow, less than half-full as alas so often the BMI domestic routes seem to be nowadays, though with decidedly high fares.

First sign of something strange was checking-in on the return. Couldn't get two seats together. Gosh, aircraft must be full. Well done commercial team. But the little departure lounge at Inverness didn't look at all full.

Aircraft turns up, it's one of the ex-BMed A320s (MEDH for the technically-minded) with half a repaint over the basic BA livery. A bigger aircraft than normal on the route. Eventually we get to board.

These aircraft have a decidedly large club cabin for an A320, with the old Club World recliners, proper 2+2 seating. This must take up one third of the fuselage. But nobody was going to be sitting in those.

Right behind the curtain all sorts of fun as passengers squeezed in to their seats, all squashed in. I was crunched next to two parents and a brawling baby. The aviator in me starts to wonder about the weight-and-balance of the aircraft in such conditions. Aren't we going to be tail-heavy ?

No, because only half the Y-class rows had people in them. We seemed to have 54 passengers on board, all squeezed into 9 rows. And behind them, plenty more completely empty seat rows.

Now being a little bold I sneaked to one of these and was fine there. But nobody else did so and all sat for getting on for two hours (courtesy of three times round the Bovingdon stack and a long, long slow approach to Heathrow) squashed in and sat upright. Whose bit of operating lack of imagination balanced up 50 passengers in an A320 like this ?