By way of an update, I contacted MPC today to ask for an update, they said that it would take around 7 days more to issue the ticket. I inquired why, as I had asked them to issue a ticket around a week ago.

The agent on the other end didn't really know what to say, and after a bit of silence decided to revise her estimate for ticket issuance to 1-3 days instead (), and that she would pass the request on.

Within an hour, the ticket was issued.

So there does appear to be some level of manual control over the process as well where an human can expedite the issuance of award tickets.

Hope this info is useful to others.