Do you have evidence to back this up other than anecdotal evidence? Email stating this "new" policy, website showing this policy, etc. The policy is what it is and like I said there is a work-around but its technically not something that should be done.

I've been on 10 AA flights in the last 3 weeks and the only time I got on the upgrade list when not upgraded during OLCI was the back-end function because the normal way of adding somebody to the upgrade list doesn't work for a US Chairmans. The system bounces it back as an invalid aadvantage number.