Just wanted to thank all of you for this post. Thanks to the information here I knew to call AS for my PNR, where i found that even though I had a ticket number, my ticket had not been reissued on AS (I booked through DL). It took DL over an hour to get it done but all is well that ends well as I was able to check in this morning online for my first AS flight and saw the "Upgrade to First Class" option and it worked perfectly for both my colleague and I.