Originally Posted by Souvlaki

Would it be accurate to rephrase it this way?

When requesting an upgrade for a nominee, the nominee gets the benefit of your status only if there is R space available and you are inside your upgrade window. However, once you are at the gate, the remaining upgrades are not R-space upgrades but J leftovers, and the status of the nominating pax becomes irrelevant, except as a "tie-breaker" between non-status companions.