Originally Posted by
Kacee
You could have booked on one ticket - ORD-GRU would have cleared, ORF-ORD would have waitlisted.
If your son is checking bags, make sure he gets to ORF early. It's not easy to interline bags across two separate UA tix.
The son was buying his tickets and didn't want to risk the waitlist on the ORD-GRU flight. With ORF-ORD added, the upgrade wasn't immediately available. Since ORF-ORD is a separate ticket, he plans to claim his bag in ORD and then check in for the next flight. If the ORF flight is on time, he will have 3.5+ hours to do that.