So, I have seen some strange and entitled behavior flying over the last 20+ years, but this one was pretty awful.

ATL-EZE last night, 17 paid business class seats (or some form of revenue). 40 minutes prior to boarding every single seat except for 3 are filled with employees, friends of employees, or last minute upgrades (Ill save my ranting about dilution of product for another time-not the point of this thread). Anyway, after all non-revs and upgrades are cleared, only 1 A B/C remain open.

After the usual meal service which I skip on this flight as its later than I like to eat, I head to bed. I wake up 3 hours into the flight and notice there is a man sleeping in 1 C. Gave it a few minutes of though but was too tired to care anymore than that.

Fast forward to breakfast, 1 of the FAs and the purser are standing in the galley clearly discussing who this guy is and where he came from. At about that moment, in view of them, he wakes up, ignores the 1 FA who asked for his breakfast order...and walks back to his seat in the last row of the plane. In shock, the lead lead purser quickly follows.

As we were waiting to deplane, she asked me if I saw the gentlemen and I repeated much what I stated here. She, with a smile on her face, said that when they questioned him, he said "the seat was open, so I sat in it".

When we deplaned in EZE there was a police officer waiting and according to what I overheard, they planned to bill him for the difference in fare.

There was a very long thread about something very similar not too long ago. If memory serves me correctly the conversation degraded quickly.

General consensus from 50% says NBD seat was open, other 50% thought it was theft and deserved criminal prosecution and civil action.

The non-revs are entitled to sit up front if the seats are unoccupied by rev pax.

It is a perk that is part of their employment compensation. I am sorry you have such an issue with this.

It really amazes me that so many on this forum have an issue with that, when most are only flying up front due to their employers. Do people like you also complain when IBM flies an exec up front?

Yes, I realize that YOU are entitled to perks of your wealth and/or employment or such. And others should not be.

Entitled?

Um, I don't think the OP was referring to the employees as entitled, but rather the guy from coach who thought he could poach a D1 seat.

Absolutely there should be recourse. 100% absolutely. The last thing that should become "finders keepers" are airline seats. Every single member here would flip if it happened on a domestic flight they were on and, heaven forbid, were victims of YBYL.

WFS(teal)F!

Re-read the OP. A Y pax apparently poached the D1 seat mid-flight.

Yeah, not sure what exwannabe is going on about, either...

I agree with you.

If that is the case, then this below paragraph has no point even being in your post as it's not relevant in any way:

Well..the OP made it pretty damn clear he/she was ALSO peeved about the non revs...

Did you read the same post as I did? I don't know how you could have missed it....

"I'll save my ranting for another time......" Really, then why mention it?

How many of those forward cabin seats on that flight did DL make available last minute for using miles at the "lowest" SkyMiles price level for the ATL-EZE route?

Aren't non-revs competing with SkyMiles users for forward cabin seats on such DL flights?

The incident doesn't sound so serious when there is only one Argentine police officer there on arrival.

How long did it take for an FA to realize that someone just appeared in a previously unoccupied D1 seat?

If there were that many nonrevs than delta rm isnt pricing the product correctly if their goal is to have 70 percent paid first/business class. I know its blaspemy to think you could strike a balance between olci offers for j and nonrevs occupying j but i digress. It is what it is but I understand how one could think the product in j is being diluted.

OP raises two issues and then clearly defers the rant about DL's decision to seat its employees in seats it controls.

As to the thief, he got caught and apparently DL reasonably believes that it will collect the fare difference under threat of a lengthy visit with the Argentinian gendarmerie. Good on DL for that.

As to the entire issue of employee travel, MYOB. Maybe the seats are empty because DL does a lousy job pricing them and maybe DL ought to hand them out to people who really believe they are elite because they've got a shiny plastic card which tells them they are. But, bottom line is that the seats belong to DL and DL can do with them as it pleases.

Lots of operating businesses provide all manner of employee perks. Space available premium travel is one thing DL can do. Clearly the company knows about it, chooses to do it and that's the end of it.

I seriously doubt that the mentioned Argentine police officer at EZE was going to be that effective in shaking down the self-upgrading passenger for the artificial fare difference between two seats on the given flight; but if it happened/happens, I would love to hear about it.

Minding their own business is indeed why some DL SkyMiles customers may be thinking about the impact of so many non-revs being in the forward cabin on their flights.