>>>>>There are R seats showing in the availability tool for both flights--one flight is wide open.

After about a half hour on the phone including run-around transfer to somebody in accounting who told me that the difference between my middle initial on my ticket and the full middle-name on my credit card means diddly-squat, I got the available R-bucket F-class SFO-MSN on my return, but here are some conclusions about the whole matter:

1) I think that there is currently a systemic problem with people who have changed status and then hope for EUA upgrades on upgraded itineraries (one supervisor said that she simply did not know why my newly Gold record kept getting "kicked out" of the upgrade process);

2) people in this situation need to DOCUMENT exactly WHO they speak to at the Gold/Plat line, how often this is referred to a supervisor and what the result is, and exactly what they are told by whom; post it here if you don't get satisfaction;

3) the NWA website specifies in writing that if one has Gold status, that one is upgraded if space is available to F class three days prior to travel; this is a contractual stipulation--if they will not act to remedy any technical problem in fulfilling that obligation, despite your earnest efforts to inform them of the discrepancy, then they are negligent, and are in breach of contract.

4) if you know that there is space available, and it is getting to being less than 3-days prior to travel, you have a contractual right to that upgrade--any "difficulties" the system may be having must be addressed in the course of your repeated phone calls, because you are letting them formally know that there is a problem, and you are asserting your right as specified on the website; any ignoring of that right ultimately, down the line, constitutes fraud, because it is ignoring their specific declaration of what your benefits are, despite your consistent remonstrations and requests to remedy any technical flaw;

5) hopefully some techie can simply fix the problem--it might be little more than one line of programming code that does it (I have a dozen records booked as a Silver and 'upgraded' to Gold for the next year, and if it remains a problem, I will remain on the phone--and if that doesn't fix it, I will find someone else who will fix it--hopefully this will be one of the good people at NWA, who I really appreciate--I think they are doing their best--and not a lawyer).