Separate travelers for Upgrade when both are the same Elite level
 

I am wondering if we should separate our records to maximize upgrade possibilities - we are both Platinums but have different travel patterns so far this year. What do you think, will it make much difference? I suspect on some of our flights the Plat member load could be relatively high.

I would split the record because if EUA runs and there is ONLY 1 inventory open, you will be skipped over for having 2 pax.

+1

What's worse is if they meter them out 1 at a time, you will keep getting skipped over in favor of singleton reservations.

I was wondering if that was a possibility. I went ahead and separated our records, we'll see what happens.

I learned from a CO GA that not only should they be split, the original PNR should be created separately in each pax profile. So we create individual reservations in our respective profile. It's more work and a little more difficult to manage, but it seems to be worth it.

Many have reported no problems with creating the PNR in one profile and then splitting, but under certain circumstances the EUA can be impacted. We (both Platinum) had this issue more than once and now do as described above and have not since had any issues with being passed over for the EUA.

In my relatively limited experience flying Continental I have already had a case where no upgrades cleared for platinums flying off-peak flights we took with non-elites (even though we separated the records before the upgrade window).

Are you saying that one needs to book each of the tickets separately by each passenger logging in separately? If a large # of passengers are involved, there's a real danger of the fare being increased if one attempts to book this way - these days the airline fare optimization software may very quickly reprice the itinerary before the last of the tickets is booked.

Mr. Travel_addict and I always book our tickets separately after we tried to book 2 tickets together once and found that the tickets were $40 more than if we booked separately. Yes, it's more work and there is a chance of inventory selling out but sometimes it has worked in our favor: co.com will list "Only 1 ticket available at this fare" but we will both get it. The one time he booked first and it was gone for me, another ticket in that fare bucket got released a short while later.