I'm flying with my then wife JFK-BCN on Y sometime late August and since we are in different PNRs, I decided not to waitlist for SWU due to the risk of not being seated together (currently 21A/B). I looked at expertflyer and it looks like there are quite a lot of seats available, currently J7 C0 and not much evidence of elites flying (preferred seats are empty). I have no experience with asking the gate agent to put us in the upgrade list before but I assume this is possible. I think what I'll do is to make sure there are available seats first and that our upgrade will clear before asking for an upgrade. Any thoughts? I'm a little bit skeptical of linked PNRs being handled together wrt SWUs...