About 55k EQMs last year just on this route as PLT. I’ve gotten them frequently enough to start costing me $200 on several flights (had to buy upgrades). Friday late morning/early afternoon has been good ex-LAX along with Tuesday morning ex-JFK. Was $1400 short on EQDs, and decided it wasn’t worth the extra cost and effort to maintain PLT for the privilege of paying $200 to upgrade. Have lifetime GLD and MCE seats seem pretty easy to score at checkin on my usual travel dates.

What’s the consensus answer on using 500 mile stickers prior to a status change.

Going from gold to no status. Flight in April.

would the 500 upgrade be honored and used if available or returned to my account?

Officially, the one with the highest status is the one’s priority that’s is used for the upgrade. It is this pwron’s Account that all of the stickers (self and companion) are to come from. See .com. It all spelled out there.

YMMV.

This is true until things go to the airport list, at which point 2 pax will be listed according to their individual status, even on the same PNR. It's possible to override this and have both listed on the airport list according to the higher status, but it takes agent intervention.

Moreover, 500 mile upgrades can only be used to upgrade from economy to the next cabin of service. So operating carrier, route, and cabin are a triple whammy, unfortunately.

What’s the key to getting companion upgrades to work properly when on separate PNRs?

I am EXP and my wife is Gold. I requested an upgrade for both of us, asking her to be listed as my companion since my priority is higher than hers, and I wanted to use my stickers. The flight was super empty at the window - an E75 with not a single seat occupied up front, and we were the only people in 5 rows of MCE. We didn’t get upgraded at 100 hours out. A couple seats filled at the EXP and PP upgrade windows, but we stayed where we were. I’m no stranger to “subject to availability”, but it was pretty clear lower tier elites were clearing rather than seats being purchased.

The upgrade request box wasn’t checked on her PNR. Which I suppose could be normal if I requested the upgrade for her as my companion, but I used that opportunity to ask two agents to check and make sure the requests were in properly and hadn’t gotten stuck. They both said it looked good. After a couple more seats filled at the Plat window, I asked them to remove the upgrade requests. Then I requested an upgrade only for me - cleared right away. Then I immediately requested a companion upgrade for her - also cleared right away.

I’m lucky the flight was so empty and the front cabin slow to fill, so it worked out in the end, but is there a trick to getting these to work properly? Separate PNRs always seem to cause issues, and if I had trusted what the agents were telling me, we would have continued to sit in the back despite availability clearly being there,

Has anyone had any luck getting pro-rated stickers today after the counter reset?

I was about halfway to 4 more and just called in asking if they would do so, but was shot down.

iirc, AA moved to “over halfway, get 2” approach a couple of years ago.

I had rolled over 4 more on January 28th, had a red-eye HNL-DFW that left HNL at 9:00 on 1/31, landed in Dallas on the first, 3984 miles flushed (towards stickers) because of the time zone at the departure city. Not that I have a snowballs chance clearing on my flight to/from HNL as a lowly gold anyway.

48hrs out, still haven’t cleared.

Travel alert for ORD this week. Ops anticipates those seats may be needed to re-accommodate paid Business/First? I find even on routes I routinely clear in advance become battlefield upgrades or no upgrades during IRROPS.