My husband and I are both waitlisted for a flight IAH-LHR on 1/20/2012 using 4 of my SWUs. Two different PNRs so the reservations are not linked other than they are both using my SWUs. When I booked the flights, something was going on with the website and it would not let me waitlist online - I kept getting an error which told me to call for support. I did that and both my husband and I were manually waitlisted for the flight.

I have been checking the reservations daily and today I see R=1 for the return flight LHR-IAH on 2/9/2012. So, I called the Elite line and the lady I spoke with said there was only one seat available so I asked her to upgrade my husband instead of me. She said she didn't think she could upgrade either of us because someone else might be ahead of us on the list but she would check. After 15 minutes on hold, she came back and said that she would not be able to manually upgrade me - it was up to the system to do that. She did offer to have my husband removed from the waitlist and told me I could use miles and a co-pay to upgrade him.

I'm confused. What good is the waitlist if seats are released for upgrades and you are still on the waitlist? It looks to me like I could book a ticket today for that flight and since R>0, I could upgrade at ticketing with an SWU which would totally bypass the waitlist.

For additional info, my status is Platinum on CO - I hit the 100,000 mark in November and my SWUs were posted to my account the first of December. I booked this flight to London on 12/26/2011 and got added to the waitlist that day. My husband's status is Silver on CO.

Is there something I am doing wrong or do I just not understand how the SWUs are supposed to work? I've been Platinum for several years but this is the first time crossing the 100,000 mark and, of course, the first time trying to use the SWUs

Thanks for any hints on what to do in this situation - even if it is to do nothing and wait for the system to work.