I know there are some issues with this but how much better would it be to be able to upgrade seats with other passengers at the gate rather than paying $50 and up for an upgrade through the airline.

Disclaimer: I'm posting from my Southwest Airlines gate in Seattle. I forgot to check_in yesterday and have c20 (no bueno) Southwest wants $150 for an upgrade.

Amen, Tom.

I haven't had an upgrade cost only $50 in a very long time.

Air travel itself could benefit not just from Airbnb-ization but also Über-ization.

Where's the rental plane at a reasonable price? :)

I could see that Uber aspect working at smaller executive or municipal airports. Lot's of FAA bureaucratic fun though :(

Yes. Über is having enough trouble with municipal red tape right now, it seems.

Interestingly enough this new app "gather" has some intriguing feature sets for the above airbnb for ticket upgrades concept. I could see an app that uses FB Open Graph and Twitter along with geolocation to find and peeps at the gate for this type of personal commerce for ticket upgrades.

http://allfacebook.com/gather_b95277

Could be interesting if people would use it.

But I stopped checking into Foursquare so I'm not convinced I'd check into things in advance.