I didn't do this myself, but what would you have done in their case, if JL is the second best option knowing that there is a chance that they won't find any CX later? It's not like you didn't have a chance to book the JL yourself, just you failed to do so. Everyone had the same system to use.

I remember in another thread someone complaining about CX F seats being so hard to grab and every time he checked 7am in the morning they were all grabbed (of course they were, they open up after midnight). However, I tried to book outbound and inbound LAX-HKG on CX F on two different days as the seats got released and succeeded in both times. Each time I waited till around midnight central time, then started calling AA again and again to ask for availability. Each time if the agent said no, I'd call back after 2-3 minutes after hanging up to try again, and eventually after 5-8 different calls I'd succeed. Had the person I mentioned above done the same thing, he would have gotten his seat after a few attempts, if not one. He simply didn't try hard enough so he didn't really deserve the seat.