I pay for my daughters award tix with my miles and I hold one of several cards with that benefit. Most of the times she gets upgraded based on the card and my status. One time she didn't she didn't even appear on the upgrade list, but it wasn't worth pursuing, that particular flight was full or close to full in F already, and it was a late change into that flight. IIRC, it was a early weekday morning LAX-BOS flight.

Yes, it was really weird that she never made it to the upgrade waitlist, and that was the only flight like that. I didn't push it .. it wasn't worth pushing.

Most of the time she gets upgraded early, and seems to be at a higher status than it should be for award tix. But that's their bug for now. Eventually they might fix that and she'll probably rarely make an upgrade in that situation. Certainly not between SFO and EWR under normal conditions I would imagine.

So, yeah, it doesn't always work correctly, but the bugs are currently more in our favor right now than the other way, even though both you and I got hit with this one. That's how I look at it. I'm sure other people look at it differently than I do.

BTW, whenever I pay the taxes for her ticket, I use the old Chase/UA card that gives me a few PQMs, not the one with that benefit, so for now, when the computer does it, they can only see that you hold the card. So that's another thing in our favor right now. I'm pretty sure the terms are that you supposed to use the right card to get that benefit, as with the luggage benefit too. But they just have no way to enforce that now I guess.

-David