My return is coming up in a little under 36 hours. No upgrade yet. 5 seats available in first (5 according to the AS seat map and Expert Flyer and 6 according to flight status webpage). No U fares have come available since I started watching a couple weeks ago.

I have contacted AS several times over the last week (text and phone), and I seem to get alternating answers as to whether the Companion Fare will mess with the upgrade process or not. One person says it works just like any normal fare, another says there is a difference when on Companion Fare, and then someone else says it works like normal, etc.

One person said they checked with a supervisor to confirm that with a Companion Fare you can only upgrade with miles (with or without Emerald status) and that as an Emerald we are not eligible to upgrade with a companion. They went on to say that if it was a revenue fare then we could both upgrade based on my Emerald status. Another person said it doesn't matter if I am booked as a Companion Fare, and we should be able to be upgraded. They went on to say it will go off of status level, booking classing and then booking date. Also, they confirmed that it would be based off of my status and not my wife's (MVP).

So there seems to be a lot of confusion with the AS staff as to how things are supposed to be handled since they all don't say the same thing.

Currently our names do not show up on the upgrade list on the flight status webpage. The AS agents confirm that we are on the list though, but I'm not feeling too sure about it. Everyone seems to say it could not be accurate until you get <24 hours. It definitely doesn't seem accurate as the number of seats available in the seat map don't line up with the number marked as available in first class. Also, the names in the list keep flip flopping with flight with the same flight number that goes the reverse direction later in the day. So, it does seem to confirm that it is not accurate >24 hours out.

Unfortunately, if we do or don't get upgraded it will be hard to know if we do or don't get upgraded based on my status or not because now we are inside the upgrade window for every AS status. Since there haven't been any U fares released for weeks it would be hard to know if we don't get upgraded because there are multiple 100K/75K above us on the list (impossible to know) or if we are somehow pushed to the bottom due to Companion Fare upgrade issues (oneworld issue?) or if they released single U fares at a time and since we are a party of two (also the ticket cannot be separated due to Companion Fare) that would prevent us from upgrading. I do have Expert Flyer notifications turned on for U fares, but with it being inside the upgrade window for every status level I imagine those would automatically process for whoever is on top without even giving the alert a chance to fire.

We'll see what happens, and I will report back.