Originally Posted by flyingeph12

I think I'm usually pretty sympathetic (more so than some or even many on this forum), but I fail to see what part of your situation was AA's fault. If I am understanding your account correctly, your upgrade cleared 100 hours before the flight, but you didn't purchase the necessary upgrades until ~48 hours before your flight. In other words, you didn't have the required sticker upgrades in your account when the upgrade cleared (i.e., you wanted to see if your upgrade cleared before purchasing the necessary stickers). To make matters even more complicated, your companion was on a separate PNR. This—unsurprisingly, I think—would cause issues when you tried to check your companion in.

Then, knowing that you had an issue with your reservation(s) and knowing that it's a busy summer travel season, you arrived at the airport barely within the recommended time before departure (admittedly, maybe AA should tell people to arrive at the airport even earlier in the summer, but I'm not sure it's AA fault that the airports are busier than normal). In any event, I don't see how it's AA's problem that you arrived later than you should have.

I think it's unfortunate what happened to you, but I also think you gambled by not having the upgrades in your account at the upgrade window. In this case your gamble didn't pay off.