Some more data points.....

PPRO with about 6K rolling EQD as my 2018 Oz trip fell off last month.

LAX-HKG Sat. 5/25. Flight was J7 the day before and there was even inventory in I (3 or 4 I can’t recall exactly) and a dozen unallocated seats. Drive up to LAX and arrive 4hrs before departure. Now J2 and 2 unallocated seats. Checked in at the airport (green cards have a sticker extension, so unable to check in online, hence 4hrs early). Get added to the upgrade list and my wife and I are now 1 and 2 of 6. About an hour later we drop to 3 and 4. Come boarding time, 1 and 2 clear, so we board when called. Settled into our seats in PE and some other passengers in the cabin are asking about upgrades and the crew mention the upgrade list and it’s order. About 10 mins before we close the doors the gate agent comes aboard and asks two different passengers who were part of a larger party in PE if they would like to move to J which they did. (as an aside, one other passenger was moved from Y to the last seat remaining in F!). I have no idea why the gate agent didn’t ask us as we were definitely next on the list. I refreshed the app several times before the door closed, but never saw anyone else with the check mark except 1 and 2 on the list.

For the return on Mon 5/27, the flight was J7/I7 upon our arrival on the Sunday, but we still hadn’t cleared. Mid morning an EF C availability alert went off, so I checked and saw that the flight was C3, so I called AA and asked them to process the upgrade. The agent needed my credit card number as there was no record of it on the reservation which was strange as I had provided that information when submitting the miles + copay request months ago.

I’m guessing it was also missing on the outbound request and the gate agent couldn’t be bothered to get it from us as we were already aboard and as it was close to departure time, skipped us.