I think the issue here is that you seem to assume that the offloading decision was independent from the timing. I think there is (immense) path dependency here and that offloading decision was taken as it was precisely because the agents had to close the flight due to timing. They might have done it anyway if there had been 2 hours to go but it's certainly not a given and my guess is that they would not have done it as long as the discussion was ongoing (even if they believed that would be the final decision).

I'm sure 13901 can explain better than me, but my understanding is that queries always go to back office, never to front facing officers. I also don't think there ever is any instance in any large airport, even in the most dysfunctional systems, in which only front facing officers man desks with noone in the back office. The whole point is that front office staff may have queries, need back office colleagues to do checks, etc. Of course there may be cases when all back office people are busy, and this may well be what happened when CX couldn't get through, but why would we start from the assumption it would "necessarily" have been the case and failed.

Again, I think you try to double guess too much here. I absolutely agree with you not all customers were created equal, but that's not as simple as x is always yes and y is always no, and in this case, passengers in J - even without status - are not actually bottom of the pecking order either - they'd "formally" feature as part of the "high value" category.