So just earned my first GUF2 and I want to apply it to a business class booking LHR-JFK-LHR in Aug. I.e. it will be my first opportunity to fly in F on BA, and it should be NF as well, so really looking forward to it.

I rang the Gold line and they booked the upgrade for my return flight (that's a good start), but at present there's only 1 available reward seat on the outward flight. We left it that I would monitor availability and would ring back when 2 seats are available. That obviously makes sense, but I am now wondering whether there's an alternative approach available?

Is it possible to bag the one available reward seat right now and see whether I can get another one later? Does this mean my booking would be split? Can you happily have one person in one class, and another person in a different class on the same PNR?

If this is possible, the worst case would be that we end up split on the outward flight. I've bagged 1A and 1K on the return trip, (which seem to be the best seats in the house), but I'd be happy for the wife to go in First on the outward flight and I'll slum it in CW. The alternative (if the wife insists on us sitting together - boo hoo) is for me to downgrade her seat back to CW. I'm sure I would be allowed to do that (assuming there's availability).

When I qualify for GGL in Mar, I'll have jokers that could help with this, but seems a shame to use a joker to free up a single F class seat?

I've just started collecting OnBusiness points, so I am also looking at whether I might be able to use these to upgrade the other seat since OnBusiness upgrades uses different buckets from the reward inventory don't they?

Advice/comments would be appreciated.