Strange situation yesterday. My wife (no status) and I (EXP, 230k LPs) were traveling yesterday on separate PNRs. Both of us were on relatively complicated tickets because they were originally purchased using flight credits and were modified significantly a few times after AA schedule changes. We also had a lap infant attached to my wife's reservation.

I sent a DM a while ago to move my wife to the MCE seat next to me and request a companion upgrade for her. EF was showing J0Y0 at T100 so I fully expected to sit in Y. To my surprise, I opened the app around T48 and saw I had been upgraded to F. My wife was still in Y and EF still showed J0Y0. I sent another DM to AA just to confirm that she was on the upgrade list and sure enough the request had fallen off at some point, so they requested an upgrade for her again.

Here is where things get weird: Around T12 I checked the upgrade list and my wife was #3 out of 42. The new feature on the app said there were 2 available seats. I am guessing Y was oversold, as EF still showed J0Y0. Around T2 as we were leaving for the airport, she opened the app on her phone and saw she had been moved to F. The upgrade list did not show her as having cleared, it just now had 41 people on it with 1 available seat. The two people who had been ahead of her were still #1 and #2 on the list. #1 eventually cleared at the gate.

Did we just get lucky? I have no idea how or why my wife jumped 2 people who presumably have more LPs than me for one of the final F seats and it apparently happened while we were driving to the airport well before the flight went to gate control.