I don't know who's right, but given coolwulf's record on FT, and the history of PL-specific data he has access to, I wouldn't be so quick to discount his conclusions. coolwulf is reporting on actual real-world data, while TheTravelEkspert is just repeating what s/he has been told.

It wouldn't be the first time that a company representative says one thing, while empirical reports from actual consumers say another. (Witness UA's TOD upgrade fiasco, where after publicly denying it for months, the UA representative finally acknowledged that users were indeed being offered cheap cash upgrades while elites were waitlisted.)