Originally Posted by
Michael El
A couple of years ago I booked a UA ticket on US metal and was upgraded on the US flight as a silver.
You should have a ticket number for each airline, the number looks something like 037-0000000. Find the US ticket number and login to your USDM account. Under Travel Tools click Manage Flights. Look up by ticket number and date. This linked the US portion to my DM account and I was able to pick choice seats. I checked in on USAirways.com using the same ticket number at T-24 and checked the box to be on the UG list and was upgraded.
YMMV
There wont necessarily be different ticket numbers for each airline. It all depends on how the reservation is ticketed. In most cases, the flights will all be on the same ticket and the first airline showing up on the ticket would be the one whose ticket stock the ticket would be on.
And as to the being upgraded at the time of check in, the check in system is not connected to the automated upgrade system, so it will let an upgrade process at that time but not in advance.