Many thanks, Kiwi Flyer. I have found that Air NZ won't even do the *A upgrades unless done well in advance, which kind of cheesed me off a little. I guess that I would rather take a chance and on oneworld (QF) since I have been relatively lucky (upgraded about 1/4 of the time when going to the US).

THe biggest problem is that if I travel on Air NZ, I only get the base miles on UA where on QF I get the 100% bonus on AA. That encourages me to use miles to upgrade since I will likely get most of them back on the trip.

In the meantime, I am stuck in Denver and trying to make it back to AKL before Christmas!