Originally Posted by
LilAbner
I thought that I read somewhere, a year or so ago, that a companion could ONLY be added to the upgrade list @ T-2 and it needed to be done @ the airport. In the mean time others with lower priority than the sponsoring 1K have a shot at the f/c seat(s).
Anyway, I add our son at the UC and he usually goes to the top, but he's not too happy to be sitting alone, and possibly in a different cabin. I usually give him my b/p and sit in his seat, wherever that might be.
I think that's basically correct. Of course, you can book one companion on your original itinerary and he/she will have your upgrade status during your time in the "upgrade window" (5 days for 1Ks). The problem though, as I mentioned, is that if they trickle out the upgrade one at a time during that window, you'll get nothing if you have a companion listed.
What I have found anecdotally is that, if there's going to be any hope of a CPU, they usually hold back a few seats for airport upgrades. Like on our last transcon, the FC cabin of 24 was only booked to 18. Despite this, they still kept those remaining seats available until flight time. So we added our kids to the upgrade list at the airport, and they were in fact upgraded at the gate.
Given the seeming randomness of the way the computer processes upgrades, though, it's certainly possible that those seats could have been given away BEFORE you arrived at the airport. There's no perfect way to game this; it's just a game of playing the percentages.