Speaking of daft questions ..
When flying the loco airlines (Ryan/Easy) I have always found that excess seats on not particularly busy flights are blocked from use and the reason given is that the balance of the aircraft would suffer. Personally I think it is to facilitate turnround by making the plane easier to clean.
I can understand if it is to facilitate turnround as this all works to the advantage of cheap flying. But I dislike being patronised as I believe this explanation does.
I have flown scheduled many times where capacity has been about 50% and it has never been an issue. Or am I missing something - do the check in staff sort out the seating with the aircraft balance in mind.
Rick