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Schmooze your way into first class! Ask politely, and that comfy airline seat could be yours! If you’re a frequent business traveler, you already know the standard ways to upgrade from coach to first class while flying without paying full fare. You cash in miles or qualify for an elite level of an airline’s frequent-flier program that allows you to upgrade on a space-available basis. But there’s another way to get into first class. Call it the schmooze upgrade.

LET’S START with the basics. First class is as much a marketing tool for airlines as a revenue center. There simply aren’t that many passengers on any given flight who pay full-fare for a first-class ticket. Few companies permit anyone but their most senior management to fly first class, even on long intercontinental flights. (Which, by the way, is why business class was invented — to placate the green-eyeshade guys who bridle at the cost of a first-class ticket.)

So first class is largely inhabited by the airline’s best customers who make it a point to fly a particular airline so they can achieve elite status.

They’re the American “gold” or “platinum” AAdvantage cardholder, the United “1K” flier, or the Delta “medallion” flier. They’re the ones you see hanging around the gate agents’ desk before a flight departs, hoping they’re high enough on the airline’s waitlist to receive an unoccupied first-class seat.

Given that first class is a marketing tool, gate agents — and even flight attendants — have wide latitude in deciding who gets to sit in the front of the plane. It doesn’t cost an airline much more to move anyone from coach to first — the meals cost a few bucks more than coach offerings — and it only takes a couple of simple keystrokes on the computer to whisk you from 45F to 3C. Sometimes all you have to do is ask. Or not ask. And this is where the schmooze factor comes in.