As part of my travel expense policy, I have a slush fund to pay for these types of upgrades. However, as an EXP, if they only go to not elites, that's not a great solution. To those who think that there should be gate upgrades both for booking availability and for IRROPS, I 100% agree. I suspect that they are trying to reduce the amount of work the GA has to do in order to get the plane loaded.