Originally Posted by
bcm0830
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.
I had a similar event last week.
I used miles to waitlist to FC for myself (I was only Silver and only just made Gold during the trip) and wife (no status) on our DEN-LAX-HNL flight. I do also hold a UAC card and have high spend on it. We cleared and the PNR split (or so I've been told). She did drop off my app. I'm uncertain if that's because she used her phone or the upgrade but believe the upgrade.
Concerned about her getting left off and leapfrogged on the return HNL-SFO-DEN, I called. Twice. I was told only the gate agent could fix it. I knew we wouldn't make it to the front on the HNL-SFO as it was nearly full even though I made Gold during the trip. Don't laugh. Gold is huge for me and my usual 15 work flights/year. ;-)
After check-in, I cleared SFO-DEN. Shortly after, she popped up on the upgrade list HNL-SFO further down from me. I was 8, she 15. 22 total. She did not appear on the SFO-DEN list. Sometime prior to the flight, she suddenly cleared SFO-DEN.
Strange but it seems the phone agents don't really know how this works.