Does anyone have any recent data points on this issue? I have a flight this Friday where my companion and I wound up with split records on the outbound, as upgrade hadn't cleared by check-in, and now he's not showing on the upgrade list for Friday. I called the 1K desk, and they told me all I can do is ask the gate agent for help, but by that time, everyone else will have leapfrogged him for the upgrade. This really is a silly system of having to be in the same record to upgrade a companion. WIth AA, you can designate any one pax on the flight as a companion to have your status for upgrade.