Originally Posted by DMPHL

If you were booked in Economy originally, you would not have been upgraded at all to First Class. Any upgrade instrument works only for upgrade to the next class of service. If all 8 of the First Class seats on the LAX-HKG were open, you still would not have been upgraded into them. Your upgrade would only clear into Business Class, and only if there were availability.

In terms of upgrade priority, the time you requested the upgrade probably had nothing to do with it, since AA processes upgrades first by status, and then by rolling 12-month EQD spend within each status level. You would have been behind all Concierge Keys, all Executive Platinums, all Platinum Pros, all Platinums, and all Golds with a higher spend in the last 12 months (which, given that you've flown them once in the last 5 years, means your rolling EQD was zero), regardless of when they requested the upgrade. The only people below you on the waitlist would have been Golds with 0 EQD who requested an upgrade after you, and all non-status passengers.