Originally Posted by
rayikes
Book a trip for a friend or give someone an upgrade lately? Happened to me after I let a friend use an upgrade sticker for a couple longhaul international flights.Turns out, the friend required going through redress process. Until he did, I kept getting the dreaded "SSSSS" by affiliation. The day after his redress process ended, I flew into the US and the "SSSSS" was gone. Haven't seen it since.
Correlation or coincidence is not causation. <redacted by moderator>
I've known of people having given/sold/booked upgrades/tickets for people who were blacklisted with placements on government watchlists but that didn't result in being on government blacklists for the giving/selling/booking party. I'm speaking of situations like that of the OP.
As I said, this blacklisting of the sort hitting the OP is most commonly not going to be fixed by doing the USG's TRIP/redress process. Welcome to the airline and its contractors for causing the kind of hassles faced by the OP.