Originally Posted by
sbiddle
The answer to both is gold.
To have upgrades clear with her you need to be her elite partner and lodge RUs on the same PNR (which is a manual process as the website is broken).
I believe for 1) it should be assessed at Elite.
I asked Air NZ about this recently and was told:
However, if a Gold upgrade is requested on the same booking as an Elite member's upgrade request, the Gold will be assessed at the same time as the Elite.