Thank you so much again for the insight! Yes I have guessed that much... I have been calling MPC whenever I have time few times a day but lowly Silver won't get me too far. I was having problem booking JFK route back then when all PE tickets were showing unavail so I booked out of EWR CX899 in the end.. so now just hoping for a last min change the day of. Our 2nd leg is from HKG to ADL which would cost us extra 18k to upgrade if we can't do both legs together, just the way it is.
Just to try our luck, I also held a pair of full redemption tickets from JFK-HKG (waitlist), HKG-ADL(confirmed) and EWR-HKG (waitlist), HKG-ADL (comfirmed), interesting enough, the hold won't expire until Jan 5. Will report back!
All is fun, we have a lot of miles to burn before it expires but hopefully when the new rules on no expiration date on miles will ease the need to burn them every 3 years.