Free upgrades are like unicorns. I got one once, by being very very nice to a frazzled gate agent at DCA who had had a bad day of irrops due to snow. I asked once and didn't pester, and when two F pax no showed, she came on the plane and pulled me up. I checked my sticker balance and they were all still there (I had purchased a half dozen to try out the product, since I'm a US elite). That was once, of probably 20 AA flights recently.

The thing is, you aren't going to get a whole lot of sympathy or help on this topic. You're traveling on company paid travel, and you don't want to pay for a superior product. So you get what you pay for. It's a value proposition. Yes, US has comp upgrades, but AA doesn't and that's just the way it is. You could still fly US marketed and operated flights, btw, and get the comp upgrades until the FF programs merge. Then that'll just be the game. I think it's still a better deal to choose to pay $120 out of pocket for a 2,000 mile segment in F than to sit in the back and stare at an empty F seat and complain that it should have been free.

If your company will only pay for Y, get them to buy full Y or B and you'll get to ExPlat with points faster. Or do your own routings to pad some EQMs. Then you'll have all the free upgrades you can snag.

But regular "free" upgrades aren't a reality. And I suspect that AA will crack down more as US FFs accrue stickers.