MatthewLAX As the new year rolled in, my status dropped from 75K to regular Aeroplan member. My clearance window for a Flex fare on Jan 13 should be 0 days (queue waitlist at airport) but just now, my upgrade request cleared for the flight at T-12 days.

Hope this helps! I'm curious to see if jim32190 will have the same luck on Jan 6 for their Jan 10 flight given that their request (as 25K for Flex) was back in 2021.

In summary to others who haven't followed along: What I experienced was that whenever you request an upgrade and get added onto the waitlist, your status level at time of request will be used to determine the clearance window, even if your status level changes before the flight. I don't know how it worked prior to the 2020 eUp program, but given that 99.9% of Elites have had the same or better status for 2019 -> 2020 -> 2021 -> 2022, this might be a useful trick for post-holiday return flights in future years when people start dropping status or jumping ship to other FFPs and want to burn their credits. It does kind of smell like it's against the spirit of the program though so I wouldn't be surprised if AC fixes this.