Changing seats after the door closes?

I have on several occasions changed to an empty seat that I thought might be more desirable (the grass is always greener syndrome) within the economy section; but is it permissible to move into the economy plus section from the standard economy section?

<i>is it permissible to move into the economy plus section from the standard economy section? </i>

Permissible? No. United charges for E+, and on most of my flights, they have done a decent job of announcing and enforcing it (although to be honest, most of my flights recently have been full enough that this really wouldn't have been possible).

Can you get away with it? Hard to say, but I'd guess the chances are low. I've seen people do it with nothing said. I've seen people try it and then be told by the flight attendants to go back to their original seats. And, I've seen people try it and have other passengers report them to the flight attendants.

As noted, the economy plus section is for people who pay for it. If United allowed anyone to self-upgrade into these seats, they would never sell any of them because people would think they can just move.
I would very likely to be one of those people who would mention this to the flight attendant.
However, the absolute worst self-upgrade that I've ever been involved in was the woman who tried to move to an exit row while the plane was on the tarmac and when she saw that the fa saw her jumped into my (exit) row and sat on my lap! (No, this was not fun.) She ran back to her seat when I told her to get off of me and when the flight stopped the flight attendants (plural) went right to her seat.

On our last flight someone tried to self upgrade to biz class, and was quickly escorted back to economy. He was not happy about being caught! It was great!

As Walter Cronkite used to end his broadcasts &quot;and that the way it is&quot;.

Musical seats is very common on flights I've taken to the far East, but not seen much elsewhere.

Recently, that might be because of the fewer flights flying, meaning fuller flights.

Go online and get the best seats you can, and get them early.

The only seat-changing I've seen that was acceptable was when economy wasn't full, and people shifted around to get an aisle seat or leave a middle empty...

No you can't change into a better category just because there is an empty seat! sheez louise, otherwise we'd all be stormin' 1st class (lol)!

I hope you are asking if it's possible to buy an upgrade once you are in the air, rather than just taking a better seat that you didn't pay for. That would be a reasonable question.

But if you are asking if you can just steal an economy plus seat without paying then here's my answer: Why would anyone pay extra for economy plus if the airline just allowed coach passengers to just take the better seats on a first-come, first-served basis? That would be silly.

Please tell me my first instincts were right and you are asking about buying an upgrade if you are unhappy with your coach seat.

So you want to move to a more expensive seat without paying for it? Unless your upgraded, I hightly doubt the FAs will let you move. What's to stop others from doing the same?

Do yourself a favor, ask for an upgrade at the gate and see what happens.