AirDrop on iPhone not finding people "No people found"

Hey. I have this issue with airdrop where i try to send my girlfriend some photos and it just says “No people found”. 

1. We both have wifi, bluetooth and airdrop turned on. 2. We are even on the same wifi (in case that matters). 

3. We also both have on airdrop “Contacts only”. 

4. We have each other added as contacts obviously and both of contact cards for each other have the phone number and the email that is our iCloud/AppleID account. 

5. We both have our personal contact cards filled out with our number and iCloud/AppleID email as well. 

6. If I try to share a pic via airdrop her phone wont show up, but if she tried to share a pic as well at the same time, then on her phone my phone will show up. If i then exit Photos and try to share again, her phone will suddenly show up. 

7. If i turn on airplane mode and then turn it off and then try to share via airdrop then it will show her phone. But after some time passes, it wont show her phone again and I’d have to turn the airplane mode on and off again (or for her to also go into the airdrop share menu). 

8. It also work by tapping our phones together (even if airdrop has “no people found” thingy). 

9. If we toggle airdrop on for “Everyone” then our phones appear on the airdrop menu. 

Idk what else i could’ve done to make it work consistently. Once we manage to make our phones visible, it sends media without any problem. But making it show the others ones phone is just a hit or miss. I cant imagine constantly toggling “Everyone” or toggling airplane mode to make airdrop work a viable solution, especially on the phone that supposed to “just work”. 

Has anyone else experienced a similar issue and figured out how to fix it?

We have an iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro.