We did receive the passport through the upgrade service in time for the flight. The Royal Mail delivered the adult application and photos on Wednesday morning and I received a call from the Liverpool office early afternoon. They pushed the application through and it was printed the next day in Newport, collected in the afternoon. Very stressful process when you are heading into flights and holidays being cancelled knowing there is a fairly complex issue with your application i.e. needing to restart from the beginning!
A few observations from the process:
I spoke to four seemingly knowledgeable and understanding people who all said they had put my case through for an urgent call back from thee upgrade team. The only time actually I received an a call back was when the last person putting me for a call back confirmed that they had added my flight date on the system (noting she was surprised her previous colleagues hadn’t done this) – even though it has been discussed on every call with each of them. I would check this is being completed when you speak to the customer management teams or progression teams. I have to add that by the time I spoke with this final customer management lady I was getting upset (shaky voice and only just about holding it together not to cry!) and she did say she had put an ‘alert’ on the case as she could tell it was causing distress. I think there is something in this ‘alert’ for unlocking access to the upgrade team, other people on the forum have reported similar and there have been references to it in other discussions I had with the progression teams.
Another point of note, I only received an automated response to my upgrade email sent to Liverpool when I was 72 hours away from the flight. I very specifically only wrote ‘Flight 25th June’. I am not sure if it was the 72 hours element or the simple title of the email but I had never received one until that point. They are definitely using some sort of screening via the email titles with use of capitals or not/flight date so I would suggest following exactly what you are told to write.
Once you do get a call back from upgrade, reviewing the forum, I would say they do on the whole get your passport sorted but would suggest escalating hard at five days before flight to give yourself the best chance heading into the 72/48 hours prior with as much on your system as possible.
Happy to advise on anything else from my experience if needed.