I've been reading the archives, and haven't seen an answer to this exact scenario. Several of us at work with Silver Elite status were all ticketed together and I'm wondering if there weren't enough seats available to upgrade all of us, who would get it? Would they automatically assign the seat to one of us randomly? Will calling at midnight (which I usually try to do anyways) give me some priority, or would I need to arrive to the airport earlier? Thanks!

I recommend this to ALL elites...Call at midnight and you have a much better chance at the seats, or making sure there are no "bugs" in your reservation that will preclude you from an upgrade. I had problems with CO and NW flights on the same ticket, where they have had to manually upgrade one of the segments that didnt clear.

Won't early checkin also still be of help?

I am curious too. It seems to me that it would go by reservation time. Even if you are all ticketed together, someone would be first, then second and so on, and it seems to me that the software has to have some way of ranking people and this would be the most logical. Also just last night I was wondering from my first class seat as a silver that got there via EUA, whether I got this over a family of three because I was only one person and there weren't enough seats for three. I wonder how they would handle this. I would imagine that they would have filled the seats with as many from the family of three as possible, had they bought their tickets before I did, but they were really making a fuss which is how I noticed them. What if there were only one seat and their 5-year-old kid got the upgrade and the parents didn't? There would have to be something in the software to prevent this I would imagine but it would be interesting to know. Anyway if I were you I would try to make sure that my reservation went in first, AND if you don't get the seats, always ask at the gate to be standby. I got upgraded last Thursday this way and was so excited.

CozumelJen- From what I read somewhere in the archives it sounds like if there aren't enough seats to upgrade an entire party ticketed together that they won't automatically upgrade any 1 of them- you'd have to call & request. So this very well could be what happened on your flight, and could be the solution to my original question about how to get priority in my group.

Thanks for all the responses so far- still eager to hear about any other nuances to the system.