Originally Posted by
stevento
thank you all, that worked. As mentioned, no upgrade available, waitlist option only.
It might actually be cheaper to buy inbound outright instead of upgrade (30k+$65 vs 25k +$125 for upgrade).
But I'm guessing I'm not allowed to have 2 different reservations in same name?
Correct. If you buy them a business class award, the computer is very, very likely to cancel one or the other as a duplicate.
In order to make this work, you'd need to cancel their return flights, which would involve re-pricing the outbound to the current one-way cash fare. Then you could buy them a one-way award for the return flight.