One of my favourite travel stories involves having the same crew on a short turnaround.
I went through a stage where one of my key staff members was based in Adelaide and I was regularly flying CBR-ADL-CBR day trips so we could have face-to-face meetings at the Adelaide QC.
At the time there was a way you could use the Qantas website to select any seat in your cabin, even if it was blocked, and as I really liked 1C on the 737 I'd select that for each of my flights. Wasn't normally an issue as the J cabin was typically only half full on those flights so I didn't ever appear to have displaced anyone from that seat.
The flight down that day had a very friendly crew and I had a good chat with the staff operating the J cabin, to the point where I memorised their names and they memorised mine.
I was only on the ground for an hour or so, and ended up on the same plane with the same crew for the trip back to Canberra.
As luck would have it, a Senator was flying to Canberra to give a speech at some press club function, along with his chief of staff who had all the speaking notes so the Senator could rehearse them on the flight. At the time I vaguely recognised the Senator but had no idea he wasn't travelling solo or why he'd be wanting to sit next to his travel partner.
As a CL he obviously had been assigned 1A and his staffer 1C... or at least until my website selection inadvertently bumped the staffer back to row 3.
You could tell the Senator was upset when he saw me in 1C, presumably figuring I'd poached the seat, and got even more upset when he realised I wasn't actually in the wrong spot and he couldn't use the flight to rehearse his speech as he'd clearly planned.
The fun part was when the CSM came around pre-flight to offer drinks (remember when Qantas did that...?). He stood in the aisle, manifest in hand, turned to my 1A seat mate and very politely said "Welcome on board Mr... <checks manifest>... Senator so-and-so". He then looked at me, smiled and said "Good to see you again James" before moving on his way.
I ended up switching seats with the staffer the third time he was beckoned over to answer some question about the speaking notes, but the move was more than worth the look on the Senator's face as he tried to figure out who the hell I was to have bumped his staffer's seat selection when he and his CL status made him the most important person on the aircraft.
