Called this morning for my "single flight" exception for my wife who is accompanying me on a trip to France -- and in spite of all of their efforts to deny my "benefit" -- after 40 minutes and multiple checks with her supervisor my wife was graciously upgraded from CDG-EWR with my pluspoints! I sure miss the old days where this was a 5 minute call and we had more knowledgeable GS agents.

Thank goodness for the wiki at the top of this thread ....

ETA: Forgot to mention that the agent disclosed to me that there are new "internal numbers" that need to be available for our "exceptions" to be granted -- this was in addition to things like PZ being available (according to this agent). The flight we are on in August is WIDE open so I was surprised she still had to check and was glad that there were still 15 unsold seats on our flight...