Not policy, a bug.
I personally can't imagine gifting someone status (anyone I know either flys with me, or flys enough on their own). It only applies to 75k, SE's and lifers, so IDK how many people it failing could possibly annoy.
Is this was all implemented in something like Drools, it would be a few hours. But being COBOL or 360 ASM, it takes time for handwritten patches to be typed in, compiled, and wait for the scheduled LPAR reboot to implement.