I'm circling back to contribute a data point on this. We had saver J awards ATH-EWR ticket with 30K points to waitlist for UG to F. We went to check in ~38 hours prior to departure and saw that our upgrades (2 of us) had cleared. There were 2 other pax that had been booked for ~6 weeks (I'd been checking the seat map), and a 3rd person was also seated in F (perhaps another UG?) at departure, so 5 of us total. We did not receive an email or text letting us know our UG's had cleared, but I had looked 3 days prior, so it cleared at some point between 72 and 38 hours from departure. The lounge they use at ATH is pretty awful with no exciting food/drink options. At boarding, I found it odd that they had ~30 or more pax board before First/Biz were invited to board, because they had kids with them. When they did invite First/Biz to board, it was a bit of an unorganized cattle call. The onboard service was excellent and back to a pre-covid experience, except for masks. The crew were no longer wearing the white gowns. When we arrived in EWR, they only had F pax disembark from 1L and sent the forward biz class cabin pax to 2L.