Unfortunately, my first experience with the EUA program uncovered another problem with the new system.

According to the various reports, the official launch date for the new EUA program was October 24, 2000. However, I can report from personal experience that I was upgraded via the EUA on a flight on Oct 21. Unfortunately, this was one of the rare flights when I was traveling with a non-elite passenger. I had carefully arranged for us to have adjacent seats in coach, and was planning on not requesting an upgrade so that we could sit together. I had read in this forum that the EUA program would begin on Oct 24, so I thought that this would not affect my Oct 21 flight. Also, I had received no official correspondance from CO on the EUA program.

At checkin for my Oct 21 flight, I was informed that I had been upgraded to First. Since I had not requested this upgrade myself, I can only assume that this was as a result of an early "stealth" implementation of the EUA. Since all coach seats were full, I was unable to travel next to my travel companion (the two seats next to him were taken by a married couple, who didn't want to split up, even when offered a First Class seat). Since all other seats in coach were full, there was not an opportunity to find another combination of passengers where one would take my upgrade so that my friend and I could sit together.

As a result, after the flight I called my elite line, explained the situation, and said that I didn't want this to happen on the return segment. The agent contacted her support desk, and we jointly came to the following conclusions:

- The situation of a passenger NOT wanting to get an automatic upgrade because they are traveling with another passenger on a different PNR (or for any other reason) had not been considered.
- There is no way to flag a reservation such that the EUA is not done. This is true even if the reservation is linked with another reservation for a non-elite passenger. So, the "lowest elite level prevails for all passengers" applies only to multiple passengers in the same reservation, and not passengers in separate but linked reservations.
- The only solution that they could come up with to prevent an EUA for an elite member was to remove the OnePass number from the reservation. Of course, this necessitates the passenger remembering to add the OnePass number at checkin, or having to go through the "missed credit" procedure after the flight in order to get miles for the flight.

Since this particular situation is rare for me, and since it by bad luck happened to coincide with the (early) launch of the EUA, here are my conclusions (yours may vary):
- I'm very happy in general with the EUA, in that it enforces the pre-existing pecking order for elite upgrades, and gets rid of the necessity of me staying up past 12am to get upgrades.
- I'm very disappointed that the details of the EUA program were not disclosed to customers in advance of its implentation, especially considering that actual implentation started earlier than even the unofficial announcement indicated.
- I'm disappointed that there is no way to prevent an EUA other than removing your OnePass number from the reservation, even if you link your reservation to that of another passenger.