There is a flight (today) in which if one were to purchase a ticket and request to "Display only fares eligible for upgrade", there are "Upgrades available" on the flight in question.

However, the passenger on this flight has already done OLCI. So I went to OLCI and saw the "eUpgrade" button and pushed it.

The passenger is now listed as "business class standby".

I've tried cancelling the check-in and upgrading using the eUpgrade site, but that's a no-go. I've tried doing OLCI again and trying the eUpgrade thing again, but it still says "business class standby".

Any clues as to what is going on here? Is there a reason the upgrade doesn't confirm and offer a seat selection?

A few other details: the passenger is a lady, and also a doctor. On the downside, she will be completely unappreciative of all my efforts to upgrade her. She was probably also unaware of the possibility of upgrading, since she is one of those supposedly exceptionally rare Kanhamerian counterexamples of a frequent flyer with barely any idea what she is doing.