AC

When a friend of mine checked in for a recent flight from San Francisco to Vancouver, he was surprised that the Air Canada gate agent handed him a first class boarding pass. What was so unusual about this? Several things: He had bought an economy class ticket. He rarely flies on Air Canada and thus has no frequent-flier status on the airline. Even more unusual, the flight was half empty so this wasn't an oversell upgrade situation. So why the extra love? Because he was wearing a suit. Yep, my pal asked the gate agent why he was so blessed and she answered, "our station manager noticed how well dressed you were and told me to upgrade you." I, too, was upgraded recently on a United flight from LAX to New York, and I, too, was wearing a suit (if I'm going on a business trip, I wear my suit on the plane, in part because I don't want it to take up too much room in my carry on). I only have 80,000 lifetime miles in United's MileagePlus program, and before you say, "Yeah, but they know...