The itinerary was booked on Cathay Pacific’s Website, showing American Airlines flight numbers for the connecting flights in the US, and Cathay Pacific flight numbers for the international legs. (No code shares) This is a fairly regular process for me, and I’ve never before had any problems with upgrades for flights on American Airlines metal. When I book the flights I use my American Airlines frequent flyer number. The difference this time was that I’m usually upgraded on the AA flights one or two days before the flight, this time I was not. And once again, when I called the executive platinum desk, the automated system recognize my phone number and said it saw that I had requested an upgrade on the upcoming flight. But no agent, or the AA mobile app showed me on the list.

As for pre-check, I agree that it’s not guaranteed. What was strange is I had two boarding passes issued by American Airlines for the same flight and seat, one showing pre-check, one not. Both issued within about an hour of each other.