There's no way it will ever work as claimed. You will have a lot of folks from Silver, GLD, PLT, and 1K, asking to force the instant upgrade before GS purchased the ticket fairly late. When the GS looked at the app or the manifest, there could be a lot of folks getting cleared before him because they purchased the instant upgrade fares before the GS purchased anything. This entirely depends on the PN inventory the flight has before the day of departure, not to mention the fact that some of them use miles+copay/GPU/RPU.

I saw six names with the same last names in the red-eye PMUA 753 from LAX-EWR. Guess how that could happen?

I would say the best value of MP is 1MM with LT GLD with the companion for international *G lounges. LT GLD with 1K is more than enough with this airline.