Originally Posted by
rossmacd
the gentleman continued to argue with the GA
An unwise action on his part; I have quite some personal experience of AA GAs being more helpful to me than to the other, more argumentative, passengers. As usual, being civil and polite will get you a lot further when someone has to voluntarily take action to help you.
The AA upgrades are very much an AA flier thing, while standby is both an older idea that applies across carriers and one that is extended to the whole alliance due to tickets being sold across the alliance and passengers interconnecting. So it doesn't surprise me that the principle of status across alliance applies to standby but not upgrades.